Effects of an iron or iron and vitamin D-fortified flavored skim milk on iron metabolism: a randomized controlled double-blind trial in iron-deficient women.

What Was Tested

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

Iron deficiency anemia and vitamin D deficiency are considered global pandemics.

The aim of this study was to determine whether the consumption of a dairy product fortified with iron and vitamin D, compared to the equivalent with only added iron, exerts an additional effect on iron metabolism in iron-deficient menstruating women.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults and adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and parallel-group 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.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc could be set against what happens without it.

The Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

The design was a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel-group trial of 16 weeks' duration.

Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D was analyzed at baseline and weeks 8 and 16.

Data were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) of repeated measures for time and Time × Group interaction effects.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Calcium, Dietary, Diet, Dietary Supplements, Erythrocytes, Erythropoiesis and Food, Fortified.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 7 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 (Journal of the American College of Nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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