Use of calcium supplements, vitamin D supplements and specific osteoporosis drugs among French women aged 75-85 years: patterns of use and associated factors.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The study group was 4,221 women.

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults and people over 80, women only.

Information collected through questionnaires included current medication use and, in particular, use of osteoporosis medications (specific osteoporosis drugs, calcium and vitamin D supplementation) in the past 6 months, and history of fracture since the age of 50, including fracture locations.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was 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.

Fractures were categorized in three groups: no fracture, major osteoporotic fracture (hip, humerus, wrist, pelvis, and vertebra), and other fracture.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Bone Density Conservation Agents, Calcium, Cross-Sectional Studies, Dietary Supplements, Diphosphonates, Drug Utilization Review and France.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 4,221 women.

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

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 (Drugs & aging), a journal based in New Zealand.

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