Acetyl-L-carnitine Slows the Progression from Prefrailty to Frailty in Older Subjects: A Randomized Interventional Clinical Trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of L-Carnitine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

This study aims to evaluate the effect of Acetyl-L-carnitine (ALCAR) in pre-frail older patients.

Why It Was Studied

Ageing is characterized by a gradual decline in body function, representing the clinical situation called "frailty".

Prefrailty is the intermediate stage between frailty and robust condition.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 92 subjects taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults.

The researchers scheduled 3 months of treatment and then 3 months of follow-up.

A total of 92 subjects were selected from May, 2009 to July, 2017, in a randomized, observational, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.

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 subjects nor the staff measuring them knew who was on L-Carnitine, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the L-Carnitine group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

L-carnitine (LC) plays an important role in energy production from long-chain fatty acids in mitochondria, and its serum level is lower in prefrail and frail subjects.

The subject headings attached to it are Acetylcarnitine, Frailty, Carnitine and Aging.

Author keywords: Acetyl-L-Carnitine, cognitive impairment, elderly, motor impairment and prefrailty.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 92 subjects.

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 2022 (Current pharmaceutical design), a journal based in United Arab Emirates.

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