Effectiveness of zinc supplementation plus oral rehydration salts compared with oral rehydration salts alone as a treatment for acute diarrhea in a primary care setting: a cluster randomized trial.

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The study group was 30,000 people.

The age groups tagged for this paper are infants and young children.

Government and private providers and village health workers were trained to prescribe zinc and oral rehydration salts for use in diarrheal episodes in 1-month-old to 5-year-old children in intervention communities; in the control sites, oral rehydration salts alone was promoted.

In 2 cross-sectional surveys commencing 3 months (survey 2) and 6 months (survey 3) after the start of the intervention, care-seeking behavior, drug therapy, and oral rehydration salts use during diarrhea, diarrheal and respiratory morbidity, and hospitalization rates were measured.

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, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Six clusters of 30,000 people each in Haryana, India, were randomly assigned to intervention and control sites.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Caregivers, Developing Countries, Diarrhea, Diarrhea, Infantile, Hospitalization, India and Rehydration Solutions.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 30,000 people.

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

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2008 (Pediatrics), a journal based in United States.

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