Quercetin prophylaxis in prevention of acute mountain sickness (AMS): a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled phase-II clinical trials.

En dubbelblind placebokontrollerad studie testade profylax med quercetin vid snabb uppstigning hos 110 friska män från lågland i åldern 20–40 år. Deltagarna reste från 440 m till 3 048 m i sex dagar och sedan till 3 750 m. They received one daily food bar containing 500 mg quercetin (n=55) or an appearance-, taste- and smell-matched bar without quercetin (n=55) for 15 days, starting two days before ascent. Acute mountain sickness incidence and severity were assessed with the Lake Louise Scoring system. At the end of the study, acute mountain sickness prevalence was 2% in the quercetin group and 25% in the placebo group. The abstract also reports higher arterial oxygen saturation with quercetin: 94.0 ± 2.0% versus 90.02 ± 1.0% with placebo. It states that quercetin reduced severity scores and improved physiological and haematological responses, but the supplied results text is truncated before the related p-values and other numerical results. This is evidence in a narrow short-term hypobaric-hypoxia setting, not a test of long-term health, ageing or chronic supplementation.

Quercetin-bar prophylaxis appeared effective in reducing acute mountain sickness incidence and severity during ascent to high altitude.