Alendronate improves bone mineral density in elderly women with osteoporosis residing in long-term care facilities. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Vitamin D and Alendronate in the context of osteoporosis and bone density.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 327 women taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults and people over 80, women only.

327 elderly women with osteoporosis.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter.

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

Blinding on both sides kept the women and researchers unaware of who received Vitamin D.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vitamin D could be set against what happens without it.

Running at several centres spread the Vitamin D study over different clinics and patient groups.

Multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 2-year study.

Bone mineral density (BMD) of the spine and hip and biochemical markers of bone turnover.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Alendronate, Bone Density, Calcium, Dietary Supplements, Long-Term Care, Osteoporosis, Postmenopausal and Residential Facilities.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D and Alendronate in 327 women in people with osteoporosis and bone density.

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

Results are reported in around 3 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (Annals of internal medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc library page, Osteoporosis and bone density research.