Effects of L-carnitine administration on left ventricular remodeling after acute anterior myocardial infarction: the L-Carnitine Ecocardiografia Digitalizzata Infarto Miocardico (CEDIM) Trial

What Was Tested

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

This study was performed to evaluate the effects of L-carnitine administration on long-term left ventricular dilation in patients with acute anterior myocardial infarction.

Why It Was Studied

Carnitine is a physiologic compound that performs an essential role in myocardial energy production at the mitochondrial level.

Myocardial carnitine deprivation occurs during ischemia, acute myocardial infarction and cardiac failure.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 472 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The L-Carnitine Ecocardiografia Digitalizzata Infarto Miocardico (CEDIM) trial was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial in which 472 patients with a first acute myocardial infarction and high quality two-dimensional echocardiograms received either placebo (239 patients) or L-carnitine (233 patients) within 24 h of onset of chest pain.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got L-Carnitine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received L-Carnitine.

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

Running at several centres spread the L-Carnitine study over different clinics and patient groups.

Left ventricular volumes and ejection fraction were evaluated on admission, at discharge from hospital and at 3, 6 and 12 months after acute myocardial infarction.

What Was Measured

Carnitine is a physiologic compound that performs an essential role in myocardial energy production at the mitochondrial level.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Analysis of Variance, Carnitine, Echocardiography, Hypertrophy, Left Ventricular, Myocardial Infarction, Reproducibility of Results and Ventricular Function, Left.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 472 patients.

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

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 1995 (Journal of the American College of Cardiology), a journal based in United States.

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