Vitamin D history part III: the "modern times"-new questions for orthopaedic practice: deficiency, cell therapy, osteomalacia, fractures, supplementation, infections.

What It Covers

This review looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The nutritional basis for rickets was described between 1880 and 1915, at the same period of discovery of other "vital substances" or vitamins.

But as the capacity to produce vitamin D depends on exposure to ultraviolet B rays (UVB) from sunlight or artificial sources, vitamin D became one of the most frequently used "drugs" in the twentieth century to compensate for insufficient exposure to UVB of humans.

Furthermore, as the understanding of vitamin D metabolism grew during the twentieth century, other concerns than rickets occurred for the orthopaedic surgeon: In recent history, deficiency is explored as being an associated factor of different bone pathologies as fracture or prosthetic infection.

Who the Included Studies Covered

During the twentieth century, there were many concerns for the orthopaedic surgeon: sources and synthesis of vitamin D, regulation of the calcium deposition process for both children and adults, when vitamin D deficiency is observed, and what the best method of vitamin D supplementation is.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bone Diseases, Metabolic, Bone and Bones, Cell- and Tissue-Based Therapy, Dietary Supplements, Fractures, Bone, Immune System and Immunity.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Arthroplasty infection and vitamin D, Cell therapy and vitamin D, Fracture healing and vitamin D, Osteomalacia, Osteoporosis and Supplementation.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a review of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 13 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2019 (International orthopaedics), a journal based in Germany.

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