Long-term follow-up for mortality and cancer in a randomized placebo-controlled trial of vitamin D(3) and/or calcium (RECORD trial).

What Was Tested

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

Their objective was to investigate whether vitamin D or calcium supplementation affects mortality, vascular disease, and cancer in older people.

Why It Was Studied

Vitamin D or calcium supplementation may have effects on vascular disease and cancer.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 5292 people taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

The study included long-term follow-up of participants in a two by two factorial, randomized controlled trial from 21 orthopedic centers in the United Kingdom.

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.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc could be set against what happens without it.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Calcium, Cause of Death, Cholecalciferol, Dietary Supplements, Drug Combinations, Mortality and Neoplasms.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 5292 people.

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

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 2012 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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