Citicoline and Vitamin B12 Eye Drops in Type 1 Diabetes: Results of a 3-year Pilot Study Evaluating Morpho-Functional Retinal Changes.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

Who Took Part

The study group was 10 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Twenty patients with DM1 were enrolled and randomly divided into two groups: the DC group comprising patients treated with citicoline and vitamin B12 eye drops (10 patients; mean age ± standard deviation, 46.86 ± 8.78 years) and the DP group comprising those treated with placebo (10 patients; mean age ± standard deviation, 47.89 ± 7.74 years).

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 Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) group a baseline to be compared against.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) study would be practical.

A pilot study with prospective, randomized, and double-masked design was conducted to address the aims.

In both groups, Humphrey Matrix frequency doubling technology (FDT), spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and OCT angiography (OCTA), and adaptive optics (AO) were applied at baseline and 12, 24, and 36 months of the follow-up period.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Cytidine Diphosphate Choline, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1, Diabetic Retinopathy, Italy, Ophthalmic Solutions, Pilot Projects and Retina.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Citicoline, FDT, OCTA, Ophthalmology, SD-OCT and Vitamin B12.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and pilot study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 10 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 2 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2020 (Advances in therapy), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page, all human trials.