Effect of vitamin D supplementation on antibiotic use: a randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

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

The researchers aimed to examine the effect of oral vitamin D supplementation on antibiotic use.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study would be practical.

The researchers conducted a post hoc analysis of data from pilot D-Health, which is a randomized trial carried out in a general community setting between October 2010 and February 2012.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Anti-Bacterial Agents, Cholecalciferol, Dietary Supplements, Incidence, Pilot Projects, Respiratory Tract Infections and Vitamins.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

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 2014 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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