Feasibility of a nutritional supplement as treatment for pediatric bipolar spectrum disorders.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Micronutrients, published as a randomized controlled trial.

As nutrients play an important role in physical and mental health, they may be useful in treating mood disorders with few side-effects.

This open-label study explored the feasibility of testing therapeutic effects of a multinutrient supplement, EMPowerplus™ (EMP+), for pediatric BPSD.

EMP+ was started at one capsule t.i.d. and escalated to a goal of four capsules t.i.d., which eight children attained.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as children, both men and women.

Ten (10) children, age 6-12 with BPSD, were enrolled in 6.5 months.

Seven (7) participants completed the full trial.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and open-label.

Because people in this Micronutrients study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Being open-label, the Micronutrients study did not mask who received what.

Three (3) dropped out due to palatability and/or adherence issues.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Dietary Supplements, Feasibility Studies, Intention to Treat Analysis, Micronutrients and Patient Compliance.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and open-label study of Micronutrients.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2012 (Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.)), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.