Oral Vitamin D supplementation impacts gene expression in granulosa cells in women undergoing IVF.

What Was Tested

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

Ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) was used to assess the top canonical pathways and upstream regulators mediating the action of Vitamin D.

Why It Was Studied

Does oral Vitamin D supplementation alter the hormonal milieu of follicular fluid (FF) and the transcriptomic profile of luteinised granulosa cells (GCs) in women with Vitamin D deficiency undergoing IVF?

Vitamin D deficiency is linked to lower live birth rates among women undergoing IVF.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 145 women were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, young adults and adults, women only.

FF samples of 145 women who were randomised to receive Vitamin D or placebo from March 2017 to January 2019 were collected.

The first cohort of samples was collected from the dominant follicle of each participant and utilised for hormone profiling (n = 50 Vitamin D, n = 45 Placebo).

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

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

All follicles that were aspirated in their study measured ≥11 mm on the day of hCG trigger.

For the second cohort, the follicle aspirates of each participant were pooled to create a single FF sample, which was used for the isolation of GCs for gene expression studies (n = 20 Vitamin D, n = 30 placebo).

Six of the samples from the second cohort were used for RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 3 Vitamin D, n = 3 placebo).

Women in both groups were deficient in Vitamin D, aged 18-39 years with a normal BMI (18-25 kg/m2) and <3 previous IVF cycles.

The FF was aspirated at the time of oocyte retrieval and stored.

What Was Measured

Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was used to measure FF abundance of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, aldosterone, androstenedione, cortisol, cortisone, corticosterone, 11-deoxycorticosterone, 11-deoxycortisol, 21-deoxycortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, dihydrotestosterone, oestradiol (E2), 17-OH-hydroxyprogesterone, progesterone (P4) and testosterone.

GCs were isolated from pooled FFs and the transcriptome was evaluated by RNA-sequencing and RT-PCR.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Dietary Supplements, Fertilization in Vitro, Gene Expression, Granulosa Cells, Kruppel-Like Factor 4, Ovulation Induction and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A.

Author keywords: RNA-sequencing, Vitamin D, clinical trial, follicular fluid, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and oxidative stress.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 145 women.

Its findings take up roughly 9 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2021 (Human reproduction (Oxford, England)), a journal based in England.

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