A randomized trial of iron- and zinc-biofortified pearl millet-based complementary feeding in children aged 12 to 18 months living in urban slums.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Biofortification of staple crops with higher levels of micronutrients via traditional breeding methods is a sustainable strategy and can possibly complement fortification and other interventions to target micronutrient deficiencies in low resource settings, particularly among vulnerable populations such as children.

Why It Was Studied

This trial is registered with Clinicaltrials.gov (ID: NCT02233764), and Clinical Trials Registry of India (ID: REF/2014/10/007731).

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 223 children were involved.

The age groups tagged for this paper are infants and children, men only.

Iron status (hemoglobin, serum ferritin), plasma zinc, and anthropometric indicators (length, weight, mid-upper arm circumference, triceps and subscapular skinfolds) were evaluated at enrollment and throughout the trial.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

World Health Organization (WHO) anthropometric z-scores were calculated using WHO growth standards.

Primary outcomes were hemoglobin and serum ferritin concentrations, and growth, defined as WHO z-scores.

An intent to treat approach was used for analyses.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Anemia, Iron-Deficiency, Food, Fortified, Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, Iron, Micronutrients, Nutritional Status and Pennisetum.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Biofortification, Children, Complementary foods, Growth and Urban slums.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 223 children.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2022 (Clinical nutrition (Edinburgh, Scotland)), a journal based in England.

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