A macro- and micronutrient-fortified complementary food supplement reduced acute infection, improved haemoglobin and showed a dose-response effect in improving linear growth: a 12-month cluster randomised trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Copper (Supplement) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To examine the effect of a macronutrient-micronutrient supplement KOKO Plus (KP), provided to infants from 6 to 18 months of age, on linear growth, a single-blind cluster-randomised study was implemented in Ghana.

Why It Was Studied

Inadequate protein quality may be a risk factor for poor growth.

A total of thirty-eight communities were randomly allocated to receive KP (fourteen communities, n 322), a micronutrient powder (MN, thirteen communities, n 329) and nutrition education (NE, eleven communities, n 319).

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and single-blind study.

Because people in this Copper (Supplement) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

In this single-blind Copper (Supplement) study one party knew the assignments and the other did not.

A comparison group was followed cross-sectionally (n 303).

What Was Measured

Baseline, midline and endline measurements at 6, 12 and 18 months included venous blood draws, diet, anthropometry, morbidity, food security and socio-economics.

Length-for-age Z-score (LAZ) was the primary outcome.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anthropometry, Biomarkers, Communicable Disease Control, Communicable Diseases, Dietary Supplements, Food Supply and Food, Fortified.

The authors tagged it with the keywords AGP, α-1-acid-glycoprotein, B, baseline, CRP, C-reactive protein, Complementary feeding, E, endline and GHS, Ghana Health Service.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and single-blind study of Copper (Supplement).

The publication is from 2019 (Journal of nutritional science), a journal based in England.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.