Effects of Vitamin D3 Supplementation on Body Composition in the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL).

What Was Tested

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

Although observational studies show inverse associations between vitamin D status and body weight/adiposity, there are few large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating this relationship.

Who Took Part

The study group was 25,871 adults.

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

The VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) was a double-blinded, placebo-controlled RCT including 25 871 US adults.

771 participants (men ≥ 50 and women ≥ 55 years).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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.

Blinding on both sides kept the adults 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.

Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center in Boston.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adiposity, Body Composition, Body Mass Index, Bone Density, Cardiovascular Diseases, Cholecalciferol and Cohort Studies.

Author keywords: lean tissue, vitamin D and weight.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 25,871 adults.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 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 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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