Acetyl L-carnitine slows decline in younger patients with Alzheimer's disease: a reanalysis of a double-blind, placebo-controlled study using the trilinear approach

What Was Tested

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

To assess the longitudinal effects of acety-L-carnitine (ALC) on patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 334 subjects were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Twenty-four outpatient sites across the United States.

A total of 334 subjects diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease by NINCDS-ADRDA criteria.

How the Study Was Run

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

The subjects were allocated by chance, so the L-Carnitine group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the subjects nor the staff measuring them knew who was on L-Carnitine, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

The L-Carnitine group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

These data were originally reported by Thal and colleagues (1996).

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Acetylcarnitine, Age Factors, Alzheimer Disease, Cognition Disorders, Disease Progression, Linear Models and Longitudinal Studies.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 334 subjects.

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1998 (International psychogeriatrics), a journal based in United States.

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