Effects of oral vitamin D supplementation on linear growth and other health outcomes among children under five years of age.

What It Covers

This meta-analysis looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

To assess effects of oral vitamin D supplementation on linear growth and other health outcomes among infants and children under five years of age.

Why It Was Studied

Vitamin D is a secosteroid hormone that is important for its role in calcium homeostasis to maintain skeletal health.

Linear growth faltering and stunting remain pervasive indicators of poor nutrition status among infants and children under five years of age around the world, and low vitamin D status has been linked to poor growth.

Who the Included Studies Covered

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were infants and young children.

How the Review Was Done

In December 2019, the researchers searched CENTRAL, PubMed, Embase, 14 other electronic databases, and two trials registries.

The researchers also searched the reference lists of relevant publications for any relevant trials, and the researchers contacted key organisations and authors to obtain information on relevant ongoing and unpublished trials.

What Was Measured

However, existing evidence on the effects of vitamin D supplementation on linear growth and other health outcomes among infants and children under five years of age has not been systematically reviewed.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Body Height, Confidence Intervals, Growth, Growth Disorders, Hypercalcemia, Hypercalciuria and Micronutrients.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

Results are reported in around 17 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2020 (The Cochrane database of systematic reviews), a journal based in England.

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