[Effects of L-carnitine on serum levels of brain natriuretic peptide and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide and cardiac function in children with severe hand-foot-mouth disease]

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at L-Carnitine and BNP (Nesiritide).

To observe the effects of L-carnitine treatment on serum levels of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal pro-BNP (NT-proBNP) and cardiac function in children with heart dysfunction and severe hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD).

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 120 children taking part.

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

A total of 120 children with severe HFMD were enrolled and randomly and equally divided into routine treatment group and L-carnitine treatment group.

Thirty healthy children served as the control group.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

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

HFMD patients were given anti-fever and antiviral treatment as the basic treatment, while the patients in the L-carnitine treatment group were given L-carnitine as an adjuvant treatment to the basic treatment.

Treatment outcomes were observed in the two groups.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biomarkers, Carnitine, Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, Heart, Heart Function Tests, Natriuretic Peptide, Brain and Peptide Fragments.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of L-Carnitine and BNP (Nesiritide) in 120 children.

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 (Zhongguo dang dai er ke za zhi = Chinese journal of contemporary pediatrics), a journal based in China.

More context: the L-Carnitine compound page and the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.