Vitamin D status: multifactorial contribution of environment, genes and other factors in healthy Australian adults across a latitude gradient.

What Was Tested

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

Vitamin D deficiency is common and implicated in risk of several human diseases.

Evidence on the relative quantitative contribution of environmental, genetic and phenotypic factors to vitamin D status (assessed by the serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, 25(OH)D) in free-living populations is sparse.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 494 adults were involved.

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized 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.

What Was Measured

Evidence on the relative quantitative contribution of environmental, genetic and phenotypic factors to vitamin D status (assessed by the serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, 25(OH)D) in free-living populations is sparse.

Ambient ultraviolet radiation (UVR) levels in the month six weeks before blood sampling best predicted vitamin D status.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Australia, Case-Control Studies, Cross-Sectional Studies, Environment, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Receptors, Calcitriol and Skin Pigmentation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 494 adults.

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

The publication is from 2013 (The Journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology), a journal based in England.

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