[L-carnitine combined with coenzyme Q10 for idiopathic oligoasthenozoospermia: A double-blind randomized controlled trial]

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at L-Carnitine.

To evaluate the clinical therapeutic effect of L-carnitine (LC) in combination with coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) on idiopathic oligoasthenozoospermia (iOAT).

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 262 men were involved.

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

After 3 months of treatment, the researchers obtained sperm concentration, sperm motility, the percentage of progressively motile sperm, sperm DNA fragmentation index, the rate of sperm acrosome reaction, and the outcomes of clinical pregnancy and compared them among the four groups of patients.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this L-Carnitine study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the men nor the staff measuring them knew who was on L-Carnitine, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some men received a placebo instead of L-Carnitine, giving a reference point.

A time span of 3 months appears in the methods.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Asthenozoospermia, Carnitine, Oligospermia, Semen, Semen Analysis, Sperm Count and Sperm Motility.

Author keywords: coenzyme Q10, idiopathic oligoasthenozoospermia, oxidative stress and L-carnitine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 262 men over 3 months.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2018 (Zhonghua nan ke xue = National journal of andrology), a journal based in China.

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