Vitamin D3 supplementation and upper respiratory tract infections in a randomized, controlled trial.

What Was Tested

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

Randomized controlled trials testing the association between vitamin D status and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) have given mixed results.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 2259 participants were involved.

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

The 2259 trial participants were aged 45-75, in good health, had a history of colorectal adenoma, and had a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level ≥12 ng/mL.

Secondary data included semiannual surveys of all participants.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, placebo-controlled and multicenter 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.

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

Running at several centres spread the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study over different clinics and patient groups.

What Was Measured

Randomized controlled trials testing the association between vitamin D status and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) have given mixed results.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cholecalciferol, Colorectal Neoplasms, Interviews as Topic, Respiratory Tract Infections, Seasons and Vitamin D.

The authors tagged it with the keywords randomized controlled trial and upper respiratory tract infection.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and multicenter study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 2259 participants.

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

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America), a journal based in United States.

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