Effects of L-Carnitine Supplementation on the Rate of Weight Gain and Biomarkers of Environmental Enteric Dysfunction in Children with Severe Acute Malnutrition: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

What Was Tested

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

The researchers aimed to investigate the role of L-carnitine supplementation on the rate of weight gain, duration of hospital stays, and EED biomarkers among children with SAM.

Why It Was Studied

Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a major public health concern among low- and middle-income countries, where the majority of the children encountering this acute form of malnutrition suffer from environmental enteric dysfunction (EED).

However, evidence regarding the effects of L-carnitine supplementation on the rate of weight gain and EED biomarkers in malnourished children is limited.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 98 children were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants and children.

A total of 98 children with Weight-for-Length-z-score (WLZ) < -3 Standard deviation were enrolled between October 2021 and March 2023.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as 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 children nor the staff measuring them knew who was on L-Carnitine, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with L-Carnitine could be set against what happens without it.

A prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial was conducted at the Nutritional Rehabilitation Unit (NRU) of Dhaka Hospital, International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Analyses were conducted on an intention-to-treat basis.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bangladesh, Biomarkers, Carnitine, Dietary Supplements, Malnutrition, Severe Acute Malnutrition and Weight Gain.

Author keywords: Bangladeshi children, L-carnitine, clinical trial, environmental enteric dysfunction and rate of weight gain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 98 children.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2024 (The Journal of nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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