Submitted by: Submitted by remyjen
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Words: 376
Pages: 2
Category: Science and Technology
Date Submitted: 02/02/2016 09:21 PM
Vitamin D status and recurrent preterm birth: a nested case-control study in high-risk women.
Results
Thorp et al., incorporated all the information about the participants into a baseline characteristics table. The table has all the information of the mean ages, ethnicity, and preterm pregnancies. The results were reported well because they explicitly explained at every stage of pregnancy what their serum concentration levels were. They included any changes in development using vitamin D status. On the participants end it wasn’t reported well why some participants did not participate in the study. The overall results were described well, the authors reported changes in serum levels qualitatively by including in a table percentages of serum levels and how low levels of vitamin D were not connected with repeated preterm birth. The authors were good in reporting how ethnicity affected vitamin D status and performed a subgroup analysis to rule out deficiency in African Americans.
The discussion section gave a good summary of their key finding. They reported well that recurrent preterm births were not a result of vitamin D status being low. The study included any limitations that could create bias. The authors put into account that only measuring at 2 points serum concentrations and on top of that the second time they measured it the number of participants drastically fell. Another limitation was that their study results were not at all generalizable to other women with low vitamin D status while pregnant. This was due to the fact that less than predicted had levels lower than 50. The scientists did a good job by reverting back to their result about the consumption of fish. They interpreted that consuming fish had a negative effect on serum levels because consuming a lot of fish caused concentration levels to drop. As stated before the results from the study are not applicable to other women. One thing the scientist could do differently to improve generalizability...