A Randomized Controlled Trial of Two Ready-to-Use Supplementary Foods Demonstrates Benefit of the Higher Dairy Supplement for Reduced Wasting in Mothers, and Differential Impact in Infants and Children Associated With Maternal Supplement Response.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

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

A 3-month cluster-randomized controlled pilot trial of 2 RUSFs was conducted with 692 mothers and 580 mildly or moderately malnourished infants (6-23 months) and children (24-59 months) from 13 villages.

Primary outcomes were mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) in mothers, and weight-for-age and height-for-age z-scores (WAZ and HAZ) in infants and children.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and pilot study.

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

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Copper (Supplement) study would be practical.

Controls were wait-listed to receive RUSF.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, Cluster Analysis, Dairy Products, Dietary Fats, Dietary Supplements, Guinea-Bissau and Malnutrition.

Author keywords: HAZ, RUSF, WAZ, preschool, protein and retinol binding protein.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and pilot study of Copper (Supplement).

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 2017 (Food and nutrition bulletin), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.