T-lymphocyte and glycemic status after vitamin D treatment in type 1 diabetes: A randomized controlled trial with sequential crossover.

What Was Tested

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

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) is mediated by autoaggressive T effector cells with an underlying regulatory T-cell (Treg) defect.

Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in T1D, which can aggravate immune dysfunction.

Who Took Part

The study group was 19 women.

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

Thirty-nine T1D patients (19 women and 20 men) completed the trial.

How the Study Was Run

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

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 women 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.

In the crossover set-up each of the women took both Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Biomarkers, Blood Glucose, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1, Glycated Hemoglobin, Prognosis, T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory and Vitamin D.

The authors tagged it with the keywords T regulatory cells, cholecalciferol, glucometabolism, type 1 diabetes and vitamin D genotype.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 19 women.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 10 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Diabetes/metabolism research and reviews), a journal based in England.

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