Zinc supplementation and psychosocial stimulation: effects on the development of undernourished Jamaican children.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The researchers assessed the effects of zinc supplementation and psychosocial stimulation given together or separately on the psychomotor development of undernourished children.

Why It Was Studied

Zinc deficiency is prevalent in undernourished children and may contribute to their poor development.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 114 children were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants and young children, both men and women.

This was a randomized controlled trial with 4 groups: stimulation alone, zinc supplementation alone, both interventions, and control (routine care only).

Subjects were 114 children aged 9-30 mo and below -1.5 z scores of the National Center for Health Statistics weight-for-age references who were recruited from 18 health clinics.

How the Study Was Run

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

The children were allocated by chance, so the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc could be set against what happens without it.

Clinics were randomly assigned to receive stimulation or not; individual children were randomly assigned to receive zinc or placebo.

Development (assessed by use of the Griffiths Mental Development Scales), length, and weight were measured at baseline and 6 mo later.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Child Development, Child Nutrition Disorders, Dietary Supplements, Growth, Mother-Child Relations and Zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 114 children.

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 2005 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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