Vitamin D and vitamin D analogues for preventing fractures in post-menopausal women and older men.

What It Covers

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in this meta-analysis publication.

This is the third update of a Cochrane review first published in 1996.

Randomised or quasi-randomised trials that compared vitamin D or related compounds, alone or with calcium, against placebo, no intervention or calcium alone, and that reported fracture outcomes in older people.

Who the Included Studies Covered

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Review Was Done

The researchers searched the Cochrane Bone, Joint and Muscle Trauma Group Specialised Register (to December 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (2012, Issue 12), MEDLINE (1966 to November Week 3 2012), EMBASE (1980 to 2012 Week 50), CINAHL (1982 to December 2012), BIOSIS (1985 to 3 January 2013), Current Controlled Trials (December 2012) and reference lists of articles.

What Was Measured

Randomised or quasi-randomised trials that compared vitamin D or related compounds, alone or with calcium, against placebo, no intervention or calcium alone, and that reported fracture outcomes in older people.

The primary outcome was hip fracture.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bone Density Conservation Agents, Calcitriol, Dietary Supplements, Fractures, Spontaneous, Frail Elderly, Hydroxycholecalciferols and Osteoporosis.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 17 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2014 (The Cochrane database of systematic reviews), a journal based in England.

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