Vitamin D3 administration to MS patients leads to increased serum levels of latency activated peptide (LAP) of TGF-beta.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Deficiency of vitamin D is an environmental risk factor for MS.

Vitamin D has immunomodulatory effects, including promotion of T-cell differentiation into T-regulatory cells, which produces regulatory cytokines including TGF-β.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

The study was conducted on the patient cohort of the Finnish Vitamin D study.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc group a baseline to be compared against.

Concentrations of LAP (TGF-β), INF-γ, IL-17A, IL-2, IL-10, IL-9, IL-22, IL-6, IL-13, IL-4, IL-5, IL-1β and TNF-α were determined at screening and at 12 months using commercial fluorescent bead immunoassay kits.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Cytokines, Major Histocompatibility Complex, Multiple Sclerosis, Transforming Growth Factor beta, Vitamin D and Vitamins.

Author keywords: TGF-beta.

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 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2015 (Journal of neuroimmunology), a journal based in Netherlands.

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