Impact of trace elements and vitamin supplementation on immunity and infections in institutionalized elderly patients: a randomized controlled trial. MIN. VIT. AOX. geriatric network.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Zinc and Trace Elements.

However, few large trials in elderly people have been conducted that include end points for clinical variables.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 725 patients were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults, both men and women.

This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled intervention study included 725 institutionalized elderly patients (>65 years) from 25 geriatric centers in France.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Zinc and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received Zinc.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Zinc group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

However, few large trials in elderly people have been conducted that include end points for clinical variables.

The subject headings attached to it are Dietary Supplements, Hypersensitivity, Delayed, Immune System, Incidence, Infections, Institutionalization and Respiratory Tract Infections.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Zinc and Trace Elements in 725 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1999 (Archives of internal medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc library page, all human trials.