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Randomized trial · measured other health measures

8-week trial in 36 women around menopause: creatine 1,500 mg improved reaction time

Korovljev and colleagues · Journal of the American Nutrition Association · 2026

Original title: The Effects of 8-Week Creatine Hydrochloride and Creatine Ethyl Ester Supplementation on Cognition, Clinical Outcomes, and Brain Creatine Levels in Perimenopausal and Menopausal Women (CONCRET-MENOPA): A Randomized Controlled Trial.

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What the study found

Points to benefit

The 1,500 mg dose beat placebo on reaction time (1.2 vs. 6.6%; p < 0.01) and raised frontal brain creatine (0.9 vs. 16.4%; p < 0.01). Its edge on mood swings was not clear (p = 0.06). No severe side effects.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Randomized trial
Who or what was studied
36 people · healthy women around menopause, average age 50.1
What was tested
Creatine HCl at 750 or 1,500 mg a day, or creatine HCl plus ethyl ester at 800 mg a day, vs placebo, for 8 weeks
What it measured
Several kinds of outcomes
Daily amount
1500 mg a day
How long
8 weeks
Trial registration
NCT06660004
Who has a stake
No disclosure in PubMed
No disclosure in PubMed.
Journal
Journal of the American Nutrition Association, 2026
Source
PubMed record 40854087. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • ✓Randomized: people were put into groups by chance, so the groups start out alike.
  • ✓Compared with a placebo, a dummy treatment.
  • –Small: 36 people. Small trials can miss real effects or find chance ones.
  • –Short: 8 weeks. Longer-term effects are unknown.
  • •Measured several kinds of outcomes.
  • •The PubMed record has no conflict-of-interest statement.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: memory and thinking

    5

    2 benefit, 1 mixed, 2 no difference

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    6

    5 benefit, 1 mixed

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  4. Population studies

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  6. Animals

    1

    1 benefit

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Does creatine improve memory and brain health?”

Possibly a small boost to memory.

Confidence: low. Based on 21 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 5 papers on the same step: 4 benefit, 1 mixed. This one found benefit. It agrees with most of them.

Other papers on the same step

See all 21 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The reviewer corrected 3 fields after reading the abstract. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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