The effect of a preconception and antenatal nutritional supplement on children's BMI and weight gain over the first 2 years of life: findings from the NiPPeR randomised controlled trial.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Copper (Supplement).

Nutritional intervention before and throughout pregnancy might promote healthy infant weight gain; however, clinical evidence is scarce.

Therefore, the researchers examined whether preconception and antenatal supplementation would affect the body size and growth of children in the first 2 years of life.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 576 children taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are infants, young children and children, women only.

Measurements of weight and length were obtained from 576 children at multiple timepoints in the first 2 years of life.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

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.

Differences in age and sex standardised BMI at age 2 years (WHO standards) and the change in weight from birth were examined.

Written informed consent was obtained from the mothers, and ethics approval was granted by local committees.

The NiPPeR trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02509988) on July 16, 2015 (Universal Trial Number U1111-1171-8056).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Body Mass Index, Dietary Supplements, Commerce, Employment and Ethnicity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Copper (Supplement) in 576 children.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2023 (The Lancet. Global health), a journal based in England.

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