An Overlooked Way to Spot Emerging Antioxidant Trends

Whether you’re an ingredient supplier focused on innovation, a manufacturer exploring new concepts for supplements, or a retailer eager to offer quality products, it’s a good bet that monitoring industry trends is part of your regular routine, including trends related to antioxidants. If so, consider adding ClinicalTrials.gov to your trend-watching strategy. Why? A quick search on your favorite topics may uncover potential trends long before they surface in the published research that inspires science-based products.

One-stop searching

ClinicalTrials.gov is an extensive registry of clinical trials established by the National Institutes of Health. It provides a free, online database with a robust search engine. The database includes both federally funded and privately supported clinical studies investigating various therapeutic interventions, including dietary supplements, for a wide range of diseases and conditions. Researchers typically post information to the registry at the beginning of a study and, for certain studies, are required to post results within a year of study completion.

Refine and filter as you please

Like any good searchable database, ClinicalTrials.gov provides plenty of options to refine your search approach, including advanced filtering options. The “See Studies by Topic” option is especially helpful. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can weed out research using drugs, medical devices and other non-supplement treatments to focus only on dietary supplements by name (e.g., vitamin C) or by category (e.g., vitamins).

Back to the basics

Using the Basic Search option, you can quickly get a pulse check on ongoing or completed, but yet-to-be-published, research that you may want to keep on your radar. Here’s a basic search for studies related to one of my areas of interest—the potential anti-inflammatory benefit of antioxidant supplements for overweight kids.

1. Pick a search term. At the ClinicalTrials.gov homepage, choose “Basic Search” under the “Find” tab. Enter a search word or phrase that relates to a specific intervention (e.g., antioxidant supplement) or to a specific condition (e.g., inflammation).

2. Wrap it in quotes. If your search term is more than one word, wrap it in quotes (e.g., “antioxidant supplement”). Your results will list studies that specifically use your term before studies that randomly include both words.

3. Expand with operators. The all-cap operators AND, OR and NOT can help expand your search in a targeted manner (e.g., inflammation AND “antioxidant supplement” AND children).

4. Review the results. Your search results will include a list of relevant studies with a bonus: Hyperlinks to Study Record pages with full study details and, if available, a summary of study results.

Search results you can use

Did the search above reveal any interesting research worth following? You bet! One study, in particular, is right on point. Swiss researchers recently investigated the effect of an antioxidant supplement on subclinical inflammation in overweight children enrolled in a 4-month weight loss program. The daily supplement provided vitamin C (500 mg), vitamin E (400 IU) and selenium (50 mcg). According to the Study Record page, the study was completed in June 2012, so number crunching and publication preparation are likely underway.

Following the emerging research

Combating the increased oxidative stress that occurs in overweight kids—and overweight adults—is an emerging area of research that’s gaining momentum. In fact, in her SSC blog post this month, Lorna Williams, MPH, RD, discusses antioxidants as part of a sensible supplement program for overweight kids.

I can easily stay abreast of yet-to-be-published studies in this exciting area of research by tracking the progress of relevant studies in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry. It’s part of my overall strategy to track emerging trends that can impact product development, and I encourage you to consider making it part of yours.