A nutritional supplement during preconception and pregnancy increases human milk vitamin D but not B-vitamin concentrations.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and Copper (Supplement).

Optimal maternal vitamin status during pregnancy and lactation is essential to support maternal and infant health.

For instance, vitamin D3 is involved in infant bone development, and B-vitamins are involved in various metabolic processes, including energy production.

Through a double-blind randomised controlled trial, the researchers investigated the effects of maternal supplementation from preconception throughout pregnancy until birth on human milk (HM) concentrations of vitamin D3 and B-vitamins.

Why It Was Studied

Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov on the 16 July 2015 (identifier NCT02509988); Universal Trial Number U1111-1171-8056.

This study was academic-led by the EpiGen Global Research Consortium.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, women only.

Both control and intervention supplements contained calcium, iodine, iron, β-carotene, and folic acid, while the intervention also contained zinc, vitamins B2, B6, B12, and D3, probiotics, and myo-inositol.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

As a double-blind Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

HM vitamin D was quantified using supercritical fluid chromatography and B-vitamins with mass spectrometry.

Potential intervention effects on HM vitamins D3, B2, B6, and B9, as well as other B-vitamin (B1 and B3) concentrations were assessed using linear mixed models with a repeated measures design.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Vitamins, Vitamin D, Milk, Human, Dietary Supplements, Cholecalciferol, Lactation and Vitamin A.

The authors tagged it with the keywords 25(OH)D3, Human milk and Vitamin B.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc and Copper (Supplement).

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2023 (Clinical nutrition (Edinburgh, Scotland)), a journal based in England.

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