The effect of vitamin D supplementation and nutritional intake on skeletal maturity and bone health in socio-economically deprived children.

What Was Tested

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

To determine the effect of vitamin D supplementation on bone age (BA), a marker of skeletal maturity, and Bone Health Index (BHI), a surrogate marker of bone density. 2.

To characterise the differences in nutritional intake and anthropometry between children with advanced vs. delayed BA.

Who Took Part

The study group was 632 children.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, young children and children, men only.

Anthropometric measurements were undertaken at baseline and 18 months.

Serum 25OHD was measured at five time points on a random subset of 632 children.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind 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.

Neither the children nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

The current study is a post hoc analysis of radiographs obtained as part of a randomised controlled trial.

Dietary intake was assessed through semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaires at two time points.

Knee and wrist radiographs were obtained from a random subset (n = 641), of which 565 wrist radiographs were digitised for post-hoc analysis of BA and BHI using BoneXpert version 3.1.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Bone Density, Cholecalciferol, Dietary Supplements, Eating and Vitamin D.

Author keywords: Bone health, Growth, Malnutrition, Radiographs and Short stature.

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 632 children.

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 (European journal of nutrition), a journal based in Germany.

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