Effects of l-carnitine supplement on serum amyloid A and vascular inflammation markers in hemodialysis patients: a randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at L-Carnitine.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 36 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The researchers included 36 hemodialysis patients (15 men and 21 women).

The patients on hemodialysis were randomly assigned to either a carnitine or a placebo group.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got L-Carnitine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind L-Carnitine study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the L-Carnitine group a baseline to be compared against.

This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

The study was performed in Soodeh Hemodialysis Center in Islamshahr, Iran.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biomarkers, Cardiovascular Diseases, Carnitine, Dietary Supplements, E-Selectin, Inflammation and Intercellular Adhesion Molecule-1.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 36 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2011 (Journal of renal nutrition : the official journal of the Council on Renal Nutrition of the National Kidney Foundation), a journal based in United States.

More context: the L-Carnitine compound page, all human trials.