Serum vitamin D levels and severe asthma exacerbations in the Childhood Asthma Management Program study.

What Was Tested

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

The researchers sought to assess the relationship between serum vitamin D levels and subsequent severe asthma exacerbations.

Who Took Part

The study group was 1024 children.

PubMed indexes the participants as children, both men and women.

The researchers measured 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in sera collected from 1024 children with mild-to-moderate persistent asthma at the time of enrollment in a multicenter clinical trial of children randomized to receive budesonide, nedocromil, or placebo (as-needed beta-agonists): the Childhood Asthma Management Program.

Using multivariable modeling, the researchers examined the relationship between baseline vitamin D levels and the odds of any hospitalization or emergency department visit over the 4 years of the trial.

How the Study Was Run

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

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 children nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

More than one site took part, so the children came from several places.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adrenal Cortex Hormones, Asthma, Bronchial Hyperreactivity, Forced Expiratory Volume and Vitamin D.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 1024 children.

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

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2010 (The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology), a journal based in United States.

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