Effects of a food supplement containing phosphatidylserine on cognitive function in Chinese older adults with mild cognitive impairment: A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Copper (Supplement) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The researchers aimed to explore the effects on cognition and potential mechanism of the supplements.

Who Took Part

The study group was 190 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial recruited 190 MCI patients in Tianjin, China, and randomly assigned in intervention group and placebo group.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Copper (Supplement) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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

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

Capsules for placebo group were identical but contain no active ingredients.

Cognitive function, serum n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and neurotransmitters were assessed at baseline and 12 months.

Linear mixed effects model and causal mediation analysis were conducted to explore the effects and potential mechanism of the intervention.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Dietary Supplements, Cognitive Dysfunction, Phosphatidylserines, Cognition, China, alpha-Linolenic Acid and Fatty Acids, Omega-3.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Mild cognitive impairment, Placebo-controlled trial, Randomized double-blind and α-Linolenic acid.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement) in 190 patients.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2025 (Journal of affective disorders), a journal based in Netherlands.

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