Evaluation of L-Carnitine Efficacy in the Treatment of Non- Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease among Diabetic Patients: A Randomized Double Blind Pilot Study

Abstract

sonographic findings and elevated serum transaminases randomly divided into 2 groups. The intervention group (A) treated with L-Carnitine 750mg TDS while the control group (B) received placebo. After 3 months intervention the level of liver transaminases and sonographic degree of fatty liver compared between 2 groups. RESULT: After three months of intervention, in group A the level of AST decreased from 122.7 ± 13.6 to 96.3 ± 7 while in group B raised from 125 ± 14 to 126 ± 11 (p < 0.001). The level of ALT in group A declined from 124.5 ± 11.3 to 82.1 ± 5.2 and in placebo group decreased from 120 ± 10.8 to 115.1 ± 6.3 (p < 0.001) In comparison of average level of AST and ALT between 2 groups, we found a meaningful decline in the serum level of liver transaminases in group A (p < 0.001) while there were no significant reduction in serum level of Cholesterol, TG and FBS (p > 0.05) and also the sonographic degree of fatty liver didn't change among 2 groups. CONCLUSION: It seems that L-Carnitine is effective in treatment of NAFLD among diabetic patients and could be a potential therapeutic approach in such patients. We recommend these findings to further be verified in future studies (www.irct.ir: IRCT2014020316348N2).

L-Carnitine’s Effect on the Biomarkers of Metabolic Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

“…The review included 508 participants from nine studies in meta-analyses, and detailed information of the included studies is summarized in Table 1. Five of the studies were conducted in Iran [14][15][16][17][18], and two in Italy [11,19]. The other trials were conducted in Japan [20] and China [21].…”

“…The other trials were conducted in Japan [20] and China [21]. The studies were performed in subjects with diabetes mellitus [11,14,21], non-alcoholic steatohepatitis [14,15,19], and knee osteoarthritis [16,17] and in those undergoing hemodialysis [18,20]. The mean age of the subjects was at least 41.6 years in each study.…”

“…The duration of treatment in the studies was between 8 and 24 weeks, and 12 weeks was the most common duration used for interventions. Six RCTs used L-carnitine alone [14,[16][17][18]20,21]; one RCT used L-carnitine in combination with calorie restriction [11]; and two RCTs used a combination of L-carnitine, calorie restriction, and exercise [15,19]. The daily dose of L-carnitine used for supplementation ranged from 0.75 to 3 g/day, and 2 g/day was the most common dose used for intervention.…”

“…The quality of each of the nine RCTs was evaluated with regard to seven aspects using the ROB scale in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions of the Cochrane Collaboration. Although all the included trials reported "randomly allocating" participants, only seven studies reported generating random numbers by using a computer-generated randomization schedule, a random number table, envelopes, random block, or centralized randomization [11,14,[17][18][19][20][21]. Two studies described allocation concealment [15,16].…”

“…Two studies described allocation concealment [15,16]. Eight studies reported the dropout rate [11,14,[16][17][18][19][20][21], but the remaining study was unclear about the dropout rate [15]. Three studies provided information about the trial registry [14,16,17].…”