Solomon et al. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2015, 12(Suppl 1):P54 http://www.jissn.com/content/12/S1/P54 A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel group, efficacy study of alpha BRAIN® administered orally Todd M Solomon1,4*, Jarrett Leech2, Cynthia Murphy1,3, Guy DeBros3, Andrew Budson1,4, Paul Solomon1,5 From The Twelfth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo Austin, TX, USA. 11-13 June 2015 Background Nutritional supplements that purport cognitive enhan­cing properties are widely available and are being con­sumed by athletes with increasing prevalence. The goal of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a self-described cognitive enhancing nutraceutical on cognitive functioning in a group of healthy adults by utilizing a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled design. Methods A total of 63-treatment naïve individuals participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial. All participants completed a two-week placebo run in before receiving either active product, Alpha BRAIN® or new pla­cebo. Participants then followed the manufactures recom­mended instructions for use for six weeks. Following their placebo run in, participants undertook a battery of neu­ropsychological tests before being randomized, and again approximately six weeks later at study completion. Primary outcome measures included neuropsychological tests from the WMS-IV, DKEFS, CVLT-II, Trails A & B and PSAT as well as measures of sleep. Results Bivariate analysis indicated no significant differences between groups on any demographic variables and both groups demonstrated excellent supplement adherence (> 90%). Following the two-week placebo run in, no sig­nificant differences were found between groups on any cognitive measure. At six weeks, significant improve­ment was noted in tasks of delayed verbal recall and executive functioning for the Alpha BRAIN® group * Correspondence: todd@bostonmemory.com 1Boston Center for Memory, Newton, MA, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article compared to placebo (p < 0.05). Both groups demon­strated overall improvement on neuropsychological tests between time points. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to assess the impact of randomization on neurop­sychological outcome measures across time points. Results indicated significant interaction effects for improvement in delayed verbal recall for the AlphaBrain(TM) group, F (1.61) = 4.07, p < 0.05, partial eta squared =0.06. Conclusions Theuseof AlphaBRAIN® for 6-weeks significantly improved recent verbal memory and executive function when compared with controls, in a group of healthy adults aged 18-35. Results of this trial merit further study toward the application of cognitive enhancing supplements in athletic performance. Authors’ details 1Boston Center for Memory, Newton, MA, USA. 2Onnit Labs, Austin, TX, USA. 3Memory Clinic, Bennington, VT, USA. 4Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. 5Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA. Published: 21 September 2015 doi:10.1186/1550-2783-12-1-P54 Cite this article as: Solomon et al.: A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel group, efficacy study of alpha BRAIN® administered orally. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2015 12(Suppl 1):P54. © 2015 Solomon et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/ zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.