Effects of separate delivery of zinc or zinc and vitamin A on hemoglobin response, growth, and diarrhea in young Peruvian children receiving iron therapy for anemia.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Vitamin A and Zinc Sulfate in the context of anemia.

Anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world.

Who Took Part

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

Anemic children aged 6-35 mo were assigned to 3 treatment groups: ferrous sulfate (FS; n = 104), ferrous sulfate and zinc sulfate (FSZn; n = 109), and ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate, and vitamin A (FSZnA; n = 110).

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 A and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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

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

This was a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial conducted in Peru.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Diarrhea, Ferrous Compounds, Hemoglobins, Peru, Prevalence and Vitamin A.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin A and Zinc Sulfate in people with anemia.

Its findings take up roughly 6 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 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: Anemia research.