Zinc Supplements Taken with Food Increase Essential Fatty Acid Desaturation Indices in Adult Men Compared with Zinc Taken in the Fasted State.

What Was Tested

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

To examine zinc supplement effects on plasma zinc concentration (PZC) and estimated FADS 1 and 2 activities, when zinc supplements are taken with food compared with fasted.

Why It Was Studied

Although plasma zinc is the accepted indicator of zinc status, product-to-precursor activity indices of fatty acid desaturase (FADS) 1 and 2 have also been proposed as response indicators for changes in zinc intake.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized 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.

Fasting PZC was measured by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry.

Selected EFAs for FADS activity indices were measured by LC-MS/MS at study baseline and end.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Chromatography, Liquid, Dietary Supplements, Fasting, Fatty Acids, Essential, Tandem Mass Spectrometry and Zinc.

Author keywords: activity index, essential fatty acid metabolism, fatty acid desaturase, plasma zinc and supplemental zinc.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 7 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2021 (The Journal of nutrition), a journal based in United States.

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