A pilot trial of l-carnitine in patients with traumatic brain injury: Effects on biomarkers of injury

What Was Tested

Researchers studied L-Carnitine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To investigate the effects of l-Carnitine on neuron specific enolase (NSE) as a marker of inflammation in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Forty patients with severe TBI were randomized into 2 groups.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got L-Carnitine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger L-Carnitine study would be practical.

NSE was measured on days 1, 3 and 7 after the initiation of the study.

Neurocognitive and neurobehavioral disorders were recorded on the first and third months.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biomarkers, Brain Injuries, Traumatic, Carnitine, Enteral Nutrition, Glasgow Coma Scale, Neuroprotective Agents and Phosphopyruvate Hydratase.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Neuron specific enolase, Outcome, Traumatic brain injury and l-Carnitine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and pilot study of L-Carnitine.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2018 (Journal of critical care), a journal based in United States.

More context: the L-Carnitine compound page, all human trials.