Effect of zinc supplementation of pregnant women on the mental and psychomotor development of their children at 5 y of age.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

A negative effect of prenatal zinc deficiency on brain function has been well established in experimental animals, but this association in humans is controversial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 355 children.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young children and adults, women only.

The children took 6 tests-the Differential Ability Scales, Visual Sequential Memory, Auditory Sequential Memory, Knox Cube, Gross Motor Scale, and Grooved Pegboard tests-at a mean age of 5.3 y.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the children and researchers unaware of who received Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc could be set against what happens without it.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Body Mass Index, Child Development, Dietary Supplements, Nervous System, Psychomotor Performance and Zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 355 children.

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

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2003 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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