The effect of a single early high-dose vitamin D supplement on fracture union in patients with hypovitaminosis D: a prospective randomised trial.

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 2013, adults were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Between July 2011 and August 2013, 113 adults with a long bone fracture were enrolled in a prospective randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial.

Their serum vitamin D levels were measured and a total of 100 patients were found to be vitamin D deficient (< 20 ng/ml) or insufficient (< 30 ng/mL).

How the Study Was Run

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

The researchers recorded patient demographics, fracture location and treatment, vitamin D level, time to fracture union and complications, including vitamin D toxicity.

Outcomes included union, nonunion or complication requiring an early, unplanned secondary procedure.

Patients without an outcome at 15 months and no scheduled follow-up were considered lost to follow-up.

The t-test and cross tabulations verified the adequacy of randomisation.

An intention-to-treat analysis was carried out.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cholecalciferol, Fracture Fixation, Fractures, Bone, Fractures, Ununited, Vitamin D Deficiency and Vitamins.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Vitamin D3; Nonunion.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and Copper (Supplement) in 2013, adults.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 8 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 (The bone & joint journal), a journal based in England.

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