L-carnitine decreases myocardial injury in children undergoing open-heart surgery: A randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied L-Carnitine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The aim of this study was to study the effect of L-carnitine on myocardial injury in children undergoing open-heart surgery.

Left ventricular cardiac function was assessed by conventional echocardiography to measure left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) to determine left ventricular global longitudinal strain (2D-LV GLS).

Why It Was Studied

This clinical trial was performed on 60 children with congenital heart disease (CHD) who underwent open-heart surgery.

Blood samples were obtained pre-operatively at baseline before the administration of L-carnitine or placebo and 12 h post-operatively to measure the level of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), fas, caspase-3, creatinine kinase-MB (CK-MB), and troponin I.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 60 children were involved.

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

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.

As a double-blind L-Carnitine study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Some children received a placebo instead of L-Carnitine, giving a reference point.

The timeline in the abstract includes 1 month.

What Was Measured

Blood samples were obtained pre-operatively at baseline before the administration of L-carnitine or placebo and 12 h post-operatively to measure the level of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), fas, caspase-3, creatinine kinase-MB (CK-MB), and troponin I.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Carnitine, Heart Defects, Congenital, Oxidative Stress, Cardiac Surgical Procedures, Echocardiography, Apoptosis and Myocardial Reperfusion Injury.

Author keywords: Children, L-carnitine and Open-heart surgery.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 60 children over 1 month.

The publication is from 2024 (European journal of pediatrics), a journal based in Germany.

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