Vitamin D insufficiency in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy.

What Was Tested

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

Little is known about effects of hypoxia-ischemia or hypothermia treatment on vitamin D status in neonates with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).

The researchers hypothesized vitamin D metabolism would be dysregulated in neonatal HIE altering specific cytokines involved in Th17 activation, which might be mitigated by hypothermia.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 50 infants were involved.

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and multicenter 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.

More than one site took part, so the infants came from several places.

The researchers analyzed short-term relationships between 25(OH) and 1,25(OH)2 vitamin D, vitamin D binding protein, and cytokines related to Th17 function in serum samples from a multicenter randomized controlled trial of hypothermia 33 °C for 48 h after HIE birth vs. normothermia in 50 infants with moderate to severe HIE.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cohort Studies, Cytokines, Hypoxia-Ischemia, Brain, Inflammation, Phosphorus, Risk Factors and Th17 Cells.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and multicenter study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 50 infants.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (Pediatric research), a journal based in United States.

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