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Clinical studies

Want to test the value of your functional ingredient?
Planning on performing a clinical study on your food product?
Need to document health effects for a claim?

Demonstrating the health benefits of a product or ingredient through clinical studies gives companies a major advantage over the competition. INAF is your partner of choice for promoting your innovative functional ingredients and demonstrating their effectiveness in humans.

INAF offers a customized and comprehensive solution—from clinical studies to final report—for producing scientific evidence on the benefits of your ingredient or functional food to support a health claim. Our experts work closely with clients to develop a research protocol. We make sure we obtain necessary regulatory and ethics approvals and oversee all aspects of the clinical study, including recruitment, clinical and biological monitoring, and the analysis and interpretation of results.

Expertise

  • Cardiovascular diseases
  • Obesity
  • Diabetes
  • Women’s health
  • Eating behavior
  • Gastrointestinal health
  • Immunity
  • Sports nutrition
  • And much more

What we offer

  • Clinical study designs (multicenter, double-blind, randomized/parallel)
  • Draft protocols for studies
  • Recruitment of participants (INAF  has a database with over 2,000 volunteers)
  • Clinical  and biological monitoring
  • Site coordination for multicenter studies
  • Statistical support
  • Final reports and scientific articles
  • Regulatory affairs
    • Ethics approval (initial submission, modifications, reports)
    • Filing of applications with Health Canada (Health Products and Food Branch)

Clinical studies team

Our scientific expertise derives from our highly qualified multidisciplinary team. All members of this team of doctors, nurses, dietitians, and scientific professionals have a solid research background. They oversee your clinical studies and ensure compliance with the most rigorous scientific standards—all the while attending to the safety and well-being of participants.

Facilities

INAF’s clinical investigation unit has comfortable facilities and state-of-the-art equipment:

  • Sampling room (30 person capacity per day)
  • Metabolic kitchen (25 person capacity per day)
  • Long- and short-stay rooms
  • Calorimeter room
  • Bone densitometry room
  • Examination rooms
  • Group dining rooms
  • Private dining rooms
  • Nutritional analysis laboratory

Some completed projects

  • Dairy products: effects on blood pressure and inflammation
  • Herbs and spices: effects on blood vessel health and other cardiometabolic risk factors
  • Flaxseed oil: impact on risk factors for heart disease
  • Buttermilk: effect on blood cholesterol
  • Dark chocolate: effect on high blood pressure

Additional references

A randomised crossover placebo-controlled trial investigating the effect of brown seaweed (Ascophyllum nodosum and Fucus vesiculosus) on postchallenge plasma glucose and insulin levels in men and women.
Paradis ME, Couture P, Lamarche B.
Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2011 Dec;36(6):913-9. doi: 10.1139/h11-115. Epub 2011 Nov 16.

Impact of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BB-12 and, Lactobacillus acidophilus LA-5-containing yoghurt, on fecal bacterial counts of healthy adults.
Savard P, Lamarche B, Paradis ME, Thiboutot H, Laurin É, Roy D.
Int J Food Microbiol. 2011 Sep 1;149(1):50-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2010.12.026. Epub 2011 Jan 15.

Dietary cod protein improves insulin sensitivity in insulin-resistant men and women: a randomized controlled trial.
Ouellet V, Marois J, Weisnagel SJ, Jacques H.
Diabetes Care. 2007 Nov;30(11):2816-21. Epub 2007 Aug 6.

Effect of the Mediterranean diet with and without weight loss on cardiovascular risk factors in men with the metabolic syndrome.
Richard C, Couture P, Desroches S, Charest A, Lamarche B.
Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2011 Sep;21(9):628-35. doi: 10.1016/j.numecd.2010.01.012. Epub 2010 Jun 2.

"Healthy," "diet," or "hedonic". How nutrition claims affect food-related perceptions and intake?
Gravel K, Doucet É, Herman CP, Pomerleau S, Bourlaud AS,Provencher V.
Appetite. 2012 Dec;59(3):877-84. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2012.08.028. Epub 2012 Sep 7.