Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of the efficacy of treatment with zinc or vitamin A in infants and young children with severe acute lower respiratory infection.

What Was Tested

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

The objective was to evaluate the effect of zinc and vitamin A on the clinical recovery of children with severe ALRI.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 153 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

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

The children were allocated by chance, so the Zinc group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

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

The main outcome variable was the time for resolution of very ill status; other outcomes were resolution of fever, tachypnea, and feeding difficulty.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acute Disease, Diarrhea, Dietary Supplements, Fever, Respiratory Tract Infections, Sex Factors and Sleep Wake Disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Zinc and Vitamin A in 153 children.

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 2004 (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.