Consumption of a calcium and vitamin D-fortified food product does not affect iron status during initial military training: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, young adults and adults, both men and women.

Male (n 98) and female (n 54) volunteers enrolled in US Army basic combat training (BCT) were randomised to receive a snack bar with Ca/vitamin D (n 75) or placebo (snack bar without Ca/vitamin D; n 77) and were instructed to consume 2 snack bars/d between meals throughout the training course.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled 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.

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.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Biomarkers, Calcium, Dietary, Food, Fortified, Fractures, Stress, Iron, Dietary and Military Personnel.

Author keywords: BCT basic combat training, Bioavailability, Calcium/vitamin D supplementation, DMT1 divalent metal transporter 1, IMT initial military training and Iron deficiency.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The publication is from 2016 (The British journal of nutrition), a journal based in England.

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