Effects of school milk intervention on cortical bone accretion and indicators relevant to bone metabolism in Chinese girls aged 10-12 y in Beijing.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vitamin D and Calcium in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Their objective was to evaluate the effects of milk supplementation on cortical bone accretion and to study the physiologic mechanisms underlying the observed changes in bone.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as children, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

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

Chinese girls aged 10 y were randomly assigned into calcium-fortified milk (Ca milk), calcium and vitamin D-fortified milk (CaD milk), and control groups according to their schools in a 24-mo school milk intervention trial.

Periosteal and medullary diameters of metacarpal bone were measured at baseline and 24 mo in the Ca milk (n = 177), CaD milk (n = 210), and control (n = 219) groups.

Insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), parathyroid hormone (PTH), bone alkaline phosphatase (BAP), osteocalcin, and deoxypyridinoline concentrations were measured at baseline and at 12 and 24 mo in the Ca milk (n = 43), CaD milk (n = 44), and control (n = 41) groups.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Bone Development, Bone and Bones, Calcium, China, Food, Fortified, Milk and Social Class.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D and Calcium.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2005 (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.