Cranberries squashed as folk remedy for urinary infections

100% (real) Cranberry juice (no added sugar) and try Apple Cider vinegar pills.

Yes, why did they use caps, and diluted cranberry juice naturally sweetened with another juice?

It is too bad they don't cure a disease, but I still wish we could find a way to grow cranberries in Japan

Far more effective than any phony pharmaceutical.

Yes, why did they use caps, and diluted cranberry juice naturally sweetened with another juice?

To measure placebo effect, they have to make sure the persons can't know if they get the product to test or nothing (empty pills, mixed juice without cranberry).

Nursing home residents probably tend to have more urinary tract infections, and lots can't take care of themselves. Don't know how they account for that in the study, if they do.

Anyway, it's not the population at large. Any more studies of nursing home residents to compare with?

Not saying you can trust the cranberry companies, if they're in pro-cranberry research.

But 'Cranberries squashed' based on one 147-subject study, of compromised patients in nursing homes? Taking only cranberry pills? And half of those were taking placebos? And this resolves "decades of conflicting evidence"? At least, the headline is claiming that: "Cranberries squashed as folk remedy for urinary infections".

How much active ingredients are in pills, compared to juice?

How much active ingredients are in pills, compared to juice?

googling for a minute got me "72 mg total, equivalent to 20 ounces of cranberry juice"

The choosing of patients its of course expected, if you want to study UTIs you have to go to groups of people that frequently present them, else you would need to enroll thousands of healthy volunteers to get a couple of dozens with infections during a year. There is no need to adjust for their situation because the supposed effect of cranberries is not dependent on the patient ability to take care of themselves but on the alleged production of hippuric acid and proanthocyanidins. The authors anyway did a really good job with detailed criteria to evaluate symptomatic infection in this specific population in order to make it objective so its not just checking if the patient had little or lots of pain.

As explained before you have to make it a blind study if you want to get any significative results, there is nothing in the process of making the pills that would make it different for UTIs than the juice but that will mask the taste so the patients will not know what are they taking that is why you can't just give them juice or water

And yes this is only one study (not the first of course) but statistically the results can be demonstrated as significative therefore the value of the study is very high, if you have absolutely no information about the effect then you can understandably think it might be useful to drink the juice, but if you search carefully and find nothing in a well designed study you would need an even bigger and better study to recommend it to patients.

Anyway you can read more directly from JAMA http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2576821