Meta-Analysis Results on Creatine Supplementation Effects in Young Men

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 39 randomized controlled trials quantifies the effects of creatine supplementation on body composition and exercise performance in healthy men aged 18–30. Jinfa Gu authored this review, which pools evidence from trials published up to October 1, 2025. The analysis compares outcomes under resistance training versus non-resistance training contexts.

Use Cases

• Compare fat-free mass (FFM) and lean body mass (LBM) gains between resistance training (RT) and non-RT conditions from pooled trial estimates.
• Analyze the effect of intervention duration on outcome consistency using the exploratory subgroup analysis results.
• Assess heterogeneity in countermovement jump (CMJ) improvement estimates across the included studies.
• Examine the pooled increases in Wingate test peak power and mean power reported for both training contexts.
• Investigate the modifying effect of training context as a prespecified comparison variable on body composition outcomes.

Strengths

• Evidence synthesis from 39 eligible randomized controlled trials.
• Analysis prespecifies and uses training context (RT vs. non-RT) as the main comparison.
• Reports specific pooled estimates for outcomes like FFM (+3.39 kg) and Wingate peak power (+71.27 W).

Limitations

• High statistical heterogeneity reported for the countermovement jump (CMJ) outcome (I² = 88.5%).
• Limited scope focused solely on healthy men aged 18–30 years.
• Dataset is a 15.9 KB document containing summary results, not the underlying trial-level data.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Jinfa Gu.

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis pooling results from randomized controlled trials.

Time Range

Trials included up to October 1, 2025.

Freshness

Analysis includes trials up to October 1, 2025; document last updated April 8, 2026.

Geography

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