Research paper
Manipulating antioxidant intake in asthma: a randomized controlled trial.
Study answer
What this study found
Increasing fruit and vegetable intake improved asthma outcomes, but tomato lycopene capsules did not add benefit. After 14 days, the low-antioxidant diet had lower %FEV1 and %FVC than the high-antioxidant diet, and by trial end the low-antioxidant group was 2.26 times as likely to exacerbate (95% CI 1.04, 4.91; P = 0.039). Among low-antioxidant diet participants, tomato extract and placebo showed no differences in airway or systemic inflammation or clinical outcomes, although log plasma CRP change per visit differed (0.03 [0, 0.06] vs -0.01 [-0.08, 0.06]; P = 0.010). Overall, the findings…
- Study & population
- Randomized controlled trial in adults with stable asthma recruited from an asthma clinic in New South Wales, Australia.
- Intervention
- Tomato extract (Lyc-o-Mato) capsules provided 15 mg lycopene per capsule, taken 1 capsule 3 times daily for a total of 45 mg/day during the supplementation phase.
- Key limitation
- Single-center trial in adults with stable asthma, which limits generalizability.
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Open PDFOriginal abstract
BACKGROUND Antioxidant-rich diets are associated with reduced asthma prevalence in epidemiologic studies. We previously showed that short-term manipulation of antioxidant defenses leads to changes in asthma outcomes. OBJECTIVE The objective was to in…