Effects of calcium and vitamin D supplementation on hip bone mineral density and calcium-related analytes in elderly ambulatory Australian women: a five-year randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The aim was to evaluate the effect of vitamin D added to calcium supplementation on hip dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry BMD and calcium-related analytes.

Why It Was Studied

Effects of long-term calcium, with or without vitamin D, on hip bone mineral density (BMD) and bone turnover in sunny climates have not been reported.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults and people over 80, women only.

The study was a 5-yr randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of 120 community-dwelling women aged 70-80 yr.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was 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.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

The subject headings attached to it are Ambulatory Care, Bone Density, Calcium, Dietary Supplements, Intestinal Absorption, Parathyroid Hormone and Patient Compliance.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2008 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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