Selected publication milestones, not an exhaustive history or discovery priority claim.
1990 — Citrate-versus-oxide solubility and human loading illustrate why availability and clinical sleep effects are different. Original PMID2407766.
1993 — Rat dietary deficiency and repletion show reversible sleep/ECoG disruption in that nutritional context. Original PMID8232845.
2002 — Small elderly crossover measures oral magnesium effects with overnight EEG and endocrine sampling. Original PMID12163983.
2010 — Rodent threonate central-exposure/synaptic work supports neural plausibility, not clinical insomnia efficacy. Original PMID20152124.
2010 — Citrate poor-sleep trial finds equal globalPSQI improvement despite some status/inflammation differences. Original PMID21199787.
2012 — Older-adult oxide trial reports selected positive symptoms and total-sleep-time null. Original PMID23853635.
2018 — StressMg+B6versusMg trial illustrates the need for a magnesium-free comparator. Original PMID30562392.
2024 — Threonate21-day trial reports mixed questionnaire and consumer wearable outcomes; subsequent correction matters. Original PMID39252819.
2025 — Prospective bisglycinate4-week trial finds a small primaryISI effect with ligand exposure unpartitioned. Original PMID40918053.
2025 — Newer six-week threonate trial retains sleep-disturbance/restorative/objective nulls alongside impairment benefit. Original PMID41601871.
2023 — A postoperative placebo-controlled threonate study finds null secondary sleep, mood and cognition outcomes; its pain-prevention population is distinguished from insomnia enrollment. Original PMID37520407.
Independent replication of a clinically meaningful sleep benefit rather than only borderline small symptom differences.
A prospectively tested magnesium-deficient versus replete response boundary using validated assessment, not post-hoc non-validated dietary questions.
Matched elemental-dose and ligand-controlled direct salt comparisons for sleep.
Human brain/mediator measurements with genuine mediator dissociation while maintaining treatment.
Polysomnography/actigraphy, daytime function and longer-term safety/adherence beyond short consumer wearable scores.
Transparent prospective registration, outcome hierarchy, sponsorship and corrections; the threonate correction changes confidence in prespecification.
An independently sponsored, prospectively registered blinded factorial trial in adults with baseline poor sleep, stratified by validated measured magnesium status before randomization. Compare matched elemental-dose magnesium salts with ligand-matched controls, including glycine/threonate-only and visually identical placebo conditions. Use a prespecified clinically meaningful ISI responder threshold plus actigraphy/polysomnography and daytime function over8–12weeks, with allocation guesses, adherence and missingness sensitivity.