Effect of a polyphenol-rich dietary supplement containing Pinus massoniana bark extract on blood pressure in healthy adults: A parallel, randomized placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Copper (Supplement) in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

High blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and prevalence rates continue to rise with ageing populations.

This study investigated the effects of a polyphenols rich dietary supplement containing Pinus massoniana bark extract (PMBE) for modulating BP in healthy Australian adults.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults.

Mixed effect regression modelling was employed involving fixed categorical effects for elapsed time, treatment assignment and their interaction as well as random subject-level intercept to account for within-subject correlations resulting from repeated measurements.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

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.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Copper (Supplement), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Copper (Supplement) could be set against what happens without it.

This study is a secondary analysis of data from a double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial.

Seated systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) were measured at baseline, 6 weeks and 12 weeks.

Effects of PMBE on modulating BP was also explored in this study stratified for SBP status (optimal v high) as well as by SBP medication status.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Blood Pressure, Pinus, Polyphenols, Australia, Hypertension, Dietary Supplements and Plant Extracts.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Ageing, Diastolic blood pressure, Pine bark extract, Proanthocyanidins and Systolic blood pressure.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement) in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2022 (Complementary therapies in medicine), a journal based in Scotland.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.