The HORIZON Recurrent Fracture Trial: design of a clinical trial in the prevention of subsequent fractures after low trauma hip fracture repair.

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 1714 subjects taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, both men and women.

One hundred and fifteen clinical centers worldwide are recruiting approximately 1714 subjects aged 50 years and over (no upper age limit, median age of enrolled subjects to date 79 years) who have undergone surgical repair of a low trauma hip fracture in the preceding 90 days.

Concomitant therapy with calcitonin, hormone replacement therapy, selective estrogen receptor modulators, tibolone, and external hip protectors are allowed.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

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

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Bone Density, Calcium, Developed Countries, Diphosphonates, Hip Fractures, Imidazoles and Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D and Calcium in 1714 subjects.

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 2004 (Current medical research and opinion), a journal based in England.

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