Effect of vitamin D supplementation on progression of knee pain and cartilage volume loss in patients with symptomatic osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in the context of osteoarthritis, cartilage loss & avoiding joint replacement, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 146 participants taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Patients were enrolled at Tufts Medical Center in Boston between March 2006 and June 2009.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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

Some participants received a placebo instead of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, giving a reference point.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Cartilage, Dietary Supplements, Disease Progression, Knee Joint, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Osteoarthritis, Knee and Pain.

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 146 participants in people with osteoarthritis, cartilage loss & avoiding joint replacement.

Results are reported in around 10 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (JAMA), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, Osteoarthritis, cartilage loss & avoiding joint replacement research.