Medium-term effect of sublingual l-glutathione supplementation on flow-mediated dilation in subjects with cardiovascular risk factors

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The study group was 16 men.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults.

The researchers enrolled 16 healthy men with CVRF in a double-blinded, randomized placebo-controlled crossover study.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 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.

Blinding on both sides kept the men and researchers unaware of who received Glutathione.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Glutathione could be set against what happens without it.

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

At each visit, blood samples were collected for biochemistry analyses and peripheral endothelial function (reactive hyperemia index [RHI]) and stiffness were measured by Endo-PAT2000.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Administration, Sublingual, Biomarkers, Cardiovascular Diseases, Dietary Supplements, Dilatation, Pathologic, Endothelium, Vascular and Glutathione.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Endothelial dysfunction and Oxidative stress.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glutathione in 16 men.

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.

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 2017 (Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.)), a journal based in United States.

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