Translational Research on vitamin A: from randomized trial to intervention and impact assessment

ABSTRACT

Translational Research is interdisciplinary and supported by three pillars: bench (basic investigation), bedside (clinical applications) and community (applications in healthcare systems). The study, based on the five stages of translational research, reviewed the history of vitamin A deficiency and nutritional blindness in Brazil (T0); the pathway from scientific discovery to intervention choice – vitamin supplementation (T1); an assessment of the candidate intervention efficacy via randomized controlled trial (T2); the assessment of implementation and coverage in practice (T3) and the intervention impact assessment (T4). To estimate the impact, we applied Wald superior statistics to identify structural breaks along the time series of general mortality of children between 6 and 59 months of age. In the Northeast, region that presents the largest program coverage, the model pointed to three breaks: August/1984, June/1994 and May/2006, in which we estimated reductions of 10%, 17% and 23%, respectively, in the monthly incidence of children´s death. The process to construct knowledge about vitamin A deficiency, the choice of the intervention, the knowledge translation to establish the National Vitamin A Supplementation Program and the evaluation of its impact, constitute an example of translational research in collective health.

KEYWORDS
Translational medical research; Vitamin A deficiency; Health impact assessment