The effects of iron and/or zinc supplementation on maternal reports of sleep in infants from Nepal and Zanzibar.

What Was Tested

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

The researchers investigated the effect of iron supplementation on maternal reports of sleep in infants in 2 randomized, placebo-controlled trials from Pemba Island, Zanzibar, and Nepal.

Why It Was Studied

There is some evidence that sleep patterns may be affected by iron deficiency anemia but the role of iron in sleep has not been tested in a randomized iron supplementation trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 2003, infants taking part.

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

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study.

The infants were allocated by chance, so the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

Groups ran in parallel: each of the infants stayed in one arm throughout.

Eight hundred seventy-seven Pemban (12.5 +/- 4.0 months old) and 567 Nepali (10.8 +/- 4.0 months) infants participated.

Maternal reports of sleep patterns (napping frequency and duration, nighttime sleep duration, frequency of night waking) were collected.

What Was Measured

There is some evidence that sleep patterns may be affected by iron deficiency anemia but the role of iron in sleep has not been tested in a randomized iron supplementation trial.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Dietary Supplements, Iron, Linear Models, Logistic Models, Mothers and Multivariate Analysis.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 2003, infants.

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

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2009 (Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP), a journal based in United States.

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