The Effect of Carnosine Supplementation on Musculoskeletal Health in Adults with Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Carnosine.

However, no clinical trials have examined the impact of carnosine on musculoskeletal health in adults with prediabetes or T2D.

Whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to assess body composition, and peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) was used to assess bone health at the distal and proximal tibia.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 49 participants taking part.

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

How the Study Was Run

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

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Carnosine group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

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

The timeline in the abstract includes 14 weeks.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Prediabetic State, Dietary Supplements, Carnosine, Bone Density, Body Composition and Hand Strength.

The authors tagged it with the keywords RCT, bone health, insulin resistance, musculoskeletal health, physical function and prediabetes.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Carnosine in 49 participants over 14 weeks.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 7 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2024 (Nutrients), a journal based in Switzerland.

More context: the Carnosine compound page, all human trials.