Environmental, personal, and genetic determinants of response to vitamin D supplementation in older adults.

What Was Tested

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

Suboptimal vitamin D status can be corrected by vitamin D supplementation, but individual responses to supplementation vary.

The researchers aimed to examine genetic and nongenetic determinants of change in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) after supplementation.

The researchers used linear regression models to examine associations between genetic and nongenetic factors and change in serum 25(OH)D levels.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 644 adults taking 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.

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

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

Baseline characteristics were obtained from a self-administered questionnaire.

Eighty-eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 41 candidate genes were genotyped using Sequenom MassArray technology.

Serum 25(OH)D levels before and after the intervention were measured using the Diasorin Liaison platform immunoassay.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Australia, Dietary Supplements, Environment, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Markers, Pilot Projects and Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and pilot study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 644 adults.

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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