Association between vitamin D and hepatitis C virus infection: a meta-analysis.

What It Covers

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a meta-analysis.

To evaluate the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and sustained virological response (SVR) in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected individuals.

Who the Included Studies Covered

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults.

The inclusion criteria were: clinical studies that included HCV infected patients aged older than 18 years regardless of HCV genotype or ethnic group; provided information on SVR rates; and were reported in the English language as full papers.

How the Review Was Done

Relevant studies were identified by systematically searching MEDLINE databases up to March 2012 and abstracts of the European and American Congress of Hepatology conducted in 2011.

Studies must provide information on SVR and the levels of 25(OH)D₃ and/or 25(OH)D₂ [henceforth referred to as 25(OH)D] in sera samples from HCV infected individuals.

Due to the heterogeneity of studies in categorizing serum vitamin D levels, a cut-off value of 30 ng/mL of serum 25(OH)D was used.

Heterogeneity was assessed using I² statistics.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include 25-Hydroxyvitamin D 2, Antiviral Agents, Biomarkers, Calcifediol, Chi-Square Distribution, Dietary Supplements and Hepatitis C.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Meta-analysis, Sustained virological response and Therapy.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2013 (World journal of gastroenterology), a journal based in United States.

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