Operational feasibility of implementing community-based zinc supplementation: impact on childhood diarrheal morbidity.

What Was Tested

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

To determine the effect of zinc supplementation on diarrheal incidence and to discover any operational constraints of zinc supplementation at the community level.

Who Took Part

The study group was 1712 children.

The age groups tagged for this paper are infants and young children, both men and women.

The researchers included 1712 children aged between 6 and 48 months in a randomized double blind study in rural area comprising of 11 villages.

Children were randomly divided into 2 groups.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Delivery of Health Care, Diarrhea, Dietary Supplements, Incidence, India, Morbidity and Rural Population.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 1712 children.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 9 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2007 (The Pediatric infectious disease journal), a journal based in United States.

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