Effects of N-acetylcysteine, oral glutathione (GSH) and a novel sublingual form of GSH on oxidative stress markers: A comparative crossover study

What Was Tested

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

The purpose of this study was to compare the bioavailability, the effect on oxidative stress markers and the safety of a new sublingual form of GSH with two commonly used dietary supplements, N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and oral GSH.

Why It Was Studied

Glutathione (GSH) is critical to fight against oxidative stress.

Its very low bioavailability limits the interest of a supplementation.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 20 volunteers taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, both men and women.

The study was a three-week randomized crossover trial. 20 Volunteers with metabolic syndrome were enrolled.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and crossover.

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

In the crossover set-up each of the volunteers took both Glutathione and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acetylcysteine, Antioxidants, Biological Availability, Biomarkers, Blood Pressure, Body Mass Index and Cholesterol, HDL.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Dietary supplement, Glutathione, Metabolic syndrome, N-acetyl cysteine, Nutraceuticals and Oral bioavailability.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and crossover study of Glutathione in 20 volunteers.

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.

The publication is from 2015 (Redox biology), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Glutathione compound page, all human trials.