Cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) therapy and vitamin D insufficiency in patients with chronic kidney disease: a randomized controlled pilot study.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

A linear mixed model using an unstructured variance-covariance matrix was used to examine change in the primary and secondary outcomes over time.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot.

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.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study would be practical.

Primary outcomes (25[OH]D and PTH levels) were measured at baseline, week 6, and week 12.

Secondary outcomes (1,25-dihydroxvitamin D and bone turnover markers) were measured at baseline and week 12.

Because of skewed data distribution, statistical analyses were performed on a logarithmic scale.

The difference between the group means was exponentiated to provide the geometric mean ratio.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acid Phosphatase, Alkaline Phosphatase, Calcium, Cholecalciferol, Collagen Type I, Isoenzymes and Parathyroid Hormone.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2008 (Endocrine practice : official journal of the American College of Endocrinology and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists), a journal based in United States.

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