Vitamin D insufficiency does not affect response of bone mineral density to alendronate.

What Was Tested

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

The researchers measured serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25OHD) at enrollment, then categorized baseline vitamin D status according to 25OHD concentration (<or= 10 ng/ml = deficient; >10 but <or= 30 ng/ml = insufficient; >30 ng/ml = sufficient) and used linear regression to compare the effects of alendronate treatment among these categories.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 1,000 women were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled 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.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Absorptiometry, Photon, Alendronate, Bone Density, Bone Density Conservation Agents, Calcium, Cholecalciferol and Femur Neck.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 1,000 women.

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

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2009 (Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA), a journal based in England.

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