Vitamin D supplements for trunk muscle morphology in older adults: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

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

The objective of this randomized controlled trial was to evaluate the effect of 12 months of vitamin D supplementation compared with placebo, on morphology and function of the trunk muscles of adults aged 50 to 79 years with low serum 25(OH) D levels.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as 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 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.

This was a secondary analysis of a randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-blind clinical trial conducted between June 2010 and December 2013 in Tasmania, Australia.

The primary outcomes in this pre-specified secondary analysis were between-group differences in change in size of rectus abdominis, transversus abdominis, internal oblique, external oblique, and lumbar multifidus muscles and function (assessed by change in thickness on contraction) of these muscles (excepting rectus abdominis) from baseline to 12 months.

Muscle size was assessed using ultrasound imaging.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Dietary Supplements, Muscle Strength, Muscle, Skeletal, Postural Balance, Vitamin D and Vitamins.

Author keywords: Muscle size and function, Older adults, Postural trunk muscles, Randomized controlled trial, Ultrasound imaging and Vitamin D supplementation.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

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 2019 (Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle), a journal based in Germany.

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