Time course of total cysteine, glutathione and homocysteine in plasma of patients with chronic hepatitis C treated with interferon-alpha with and without supplementation with N-acetylcysteine

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Glutathione.

Glutathione depletion might be one reason for the low rate of response of patients with chronic hepatitis C to treatment with interferon.

The aim of the present study was to document the thiol status of patients with chronic hepatitis C and the effects of N-acetylcysteine, a precursor for glutathione synthesis, on the concentrations of total cysteine, glutathione and homocysteine during treatment of chronic hepatitis C with interferon.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 36 patients taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Glutathione 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 Glutathione study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Some patients received a placebo instead of Glutathione, giving a reference point.

More than one site took part, so the patients came from several places.

The timeline in the abstract includes 6 months.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Acetylcysteine, Antiviral Agents, Cysteine, Glutathione, Hepatitis C, Chronic, Homocysteine and Interferon-alpha.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glutathione in 36 patients over 6 months.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1998 (Journal of hepatology), a journal based in Netherlands.

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