Biofortified orange maize is as efficacious as a vitamin A supplement in Zambian children even in the presence of high liver reserves of vitamin A: a community-based, randomized placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vitamin A in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The study sought to determine changes in total body reserves (TBRs) of vitamin A with consumption of biofortified maize.

Why It Was Studied

Biofortification is a strategy to relieve vitamin A (VA) deficiency.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 140 children were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as children, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Vitamin A study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Some children received a placebo instead of Vitamin A, giving a reference point.

The paired (13)C-retinol isotope dilution test, a sensitive biomarker for VA status, was used to measure TBRs before and after a 90-d intervention.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include C-Reactive Protein, Diet, Food, Fortified, Liver, Vitamin A, Vitamin A Deficiency and Zambia.

The authors tagged it with the keywords 13C-retinol dilution, biofortified maize, plant carotenoids and retinol.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin A in 140 children.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 9 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.