l-Carnosine As an Adjunctive Therapy to Risperidone in Children with Autistic Disorder: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

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

Seventy drug-free children aged 4-12 years old with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition.

The children were assessed by using ABC-C at baseline and weeks 5 and 10 post-baseline.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Carnosine 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 participants and researchers unaware of who received Carnosine.

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

This was a 10-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.

(DSM-5) who had an Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC-C) scale irritability subscale score of ≥12, entered the study.

The primary outcome measure was the mean change in the ABC-C irritability subscale score, and other subscale scores were defined as secondary outcomes.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Antipsychotic Agents, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Autistic Disorder, Carnosine, Irritable Mood, Linear Models and Psychiatric Status Rating Scales.

The authors tagged it with the keywords GABA-modulatory, NMDA receptor, aberrant behavior checklist, anti-inflammatory, glutamatergic and l-carnosine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Carnosine.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 7 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2018 (Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology), a journal based in United States.

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