Effect of zinc supplementation on growth in West African children: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in rural Burkina Faso.

What Was Tested

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

To analyse the effects of zinc supplementation on growth parameters in a representative sample of young children in rural Burkina Faso.

Setting Eighteen villages in rural northwestern Burkina Faso.

Subjects In all, 709 children aged 6-31 months were enrolled; 685 completed the trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 709 children taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were infants and young children, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Anthropometry, Body Height, Burkina Faso, Cross-Sectional Studies, Developing Countries, Dietary Supplements and Growth.

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 709 children.

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2003 (International journal of epidemiology), a journal based in England.

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