Vitamin D deficiency in community-acquired pneumonia: low levels of 1,25(OH)2 D are associated with disease severity.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The researchers aimed to explore the association between vitamin D levels and the severity, mortality and microbiological etiology of community-acquired pneumonia.

Who Took Part

The study group was 300 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Vitamin D levels (both, the reservoir form 25-OH and the activated form 1,25-OH2) of 300 randomly selected patients with community-acquired pneumonia due to pre-specified pathogens included in the German competence network (CAPNETZ) study were measured.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Prior to statistical analysis, values of 25-OH and 1,25-OH2 were power-transformed to achieve parametric distribution.

All further analyses were performed with seasonally and age adjusted values.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biomarkers, Cohort Studies, Community-Acquired Infections, Cross-Sectional Studies, Dihydrotachysterol, Pneumonia and Seasons.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 300 patients.

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 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (Respiratory research), a journal based in England.

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