Calcium and zinc absorption from lactose-containing and lactose-free infant formulas.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Zinc and Lactose in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The researchers measured the absorption of calcium and zinc from infant formulas by using a multitracer, stable-isotope technique.

Why It Was Studied

It is also not known whether lactose affects zinc absorption.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and crossover study.

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

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Zinc and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

The carbohydrate source was lactose in one formula and glucose polymers in the other (lactose-free).

Isotope absorption studies were conducted with a 4-tracer method in which (70)Zn and (44)Ca were provided orally and (67)Zn and (46)Ca intravenously.

Zinc and calcium absorption was measured from the fractional excretion of the oral and intravenous isotopes in urine.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Calcium, Dietary, Infant Food, Intestinal Absorption, Isotope Labeling, Lactose and Zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and crossover study of Zinc and Lactose.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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