Trial reportMaternal & child nutrition2020
Protein quality in ready-to-use supplementary foods for moderate wasting.
Trial report in Maternal & child nutrition, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Community-Based Interventions for Childhood Undernutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis.Maternal & child nutrition · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Comparative effectiveness of lipid-nutrient spread supplementation regimens for moderate acute malnutrition in Ethiopia: The MODAM-MAM individually randomized controlled trial.PLoS medicine · 2026Trial
- Protein quality in ready-to-use supplementary foods for moderate wasting.Maternal & child nutrition · 2020Trial
- Local High-Protein, Plant-Based Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food Enhances Recovery from Malnutrition in Rats.Current developments in nutrition · 2026Article
- Protein quality malnutrition.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS): 10 years on.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There are no guidelines for the optimal protein quality of ready-to-supplementary food (RUSF) for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). This randomized, controlled, double-blinded, clinical effectiveness trial evaluated two RUSFs in the treatment of MAM. Both foods contained greater than 7% dairy protein, but the protein-optimized RUSF had a calculated digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) of 95%, whereas the control RUSF had a calculated DIAAS of 63%. There were 1,737 rural Malawian children 6-59 months of age treated with 75 kcal/kg/day of either control or protein quality-optimized RUSF for up to 12 weeks. There was no difference in the proportion of children who recovered from MAM between the group that received protein-optimized RUSF (759/860, 88%) and the group that received control RUSF (766/877, 87%, difference 1%, 95% CI, -2.1 to 4.1, p = 0.61). There were no differences in time to recovery or average weight gain; nor were adverse effects reported. Both RUSFs showed indistinguishable clinical outcomes, with recovery rates higher than typically seen in treatment for MAM. The DIAAS of these two RUSFs was measured using a pig model. Unexpectedly, the protein quality of the optimized RUSF was inferior to the control RUSF: DIAAS = 82% for the protein quality optimized RUSF and 96% for control RUSF. The controlled conditions of this trial suggest that in supplementary food products for MAM, protein quality is not an independent predictor of clinical effectiveness.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.