Fatty acid desaturation in red blood cell membranes of patients with type 2 diabetes is improved by zinc supplementation.

What Was Tested

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

Membrane flexibility can be a determining factor in pathophysiological mechanisms of type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Who Took Part

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

Sixty patients with T2D were evaluated.

Thirty were randomly assigned to the zinc supplemented group and thirty to the placebo group.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized 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.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, giving a reference point.

Fatty acid composition in red blood cell (RBC) membranes was determined by gas chromatography.

Expression of gene encoding for D5D (FADS1), and D6D (FADS2) were evaluated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by real-time polymerase chain reaction.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Delta-5 Fatty Acid Desaturase, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Dietary Supplements, Erythrocyte Membrane, Fatty Acid Desaturases, Fatty Acids and Fatty Acids, Unsaturated.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Humans, Polyunsaturated fatty acids and Zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2020 (Journal of trace elements in medicine and biology : organ of the Society for Minerals and Trace Elements (GMS)), a journal based in Germany.

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