Strengths and limitations
obesity
OBESITY, RECRUITMENT
As far as we know, this clinical trial appears to be the first to compare the impacts of co-supplementation of L-carnitine + synbiotic vs. L-carnitine single prescription on the anthropometric and metabolic responses among women with obesity. The major strength of the present study was the participants’ recruitment criteria, as it was performed on non-menopause, healthy women with obesity, not taking any medications, thus eliminating the possible confounding factor effects. Moreover, supplementation with a multistrain/multispecies synbiotic might be the other privilege of this research; based on evidence, multistrain pro- or synbiotics appear to be more efficient compared with single strains, due to the plausible synergistic or complementary interactivity among diverse species/strains (Nevertheless, this study had some limitations, including a relatively short intervention duration. Furthermore, not including a third intervention group receiving synbiotic plus placebo, could be considered as the other limitation of this study. Further longer duration studies evaluating the gut microbiota composition in a three-group setting are recommended.