Statistics analysis
fasting blood glucose
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (KS test) was used to assess the normality of quantitative data. Quantitative variables were described as means ± standard deviation (SD), while the qualitative variables were expressed as percentage and frequency and were compared using the Chi-square test. The repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to assess the effect of group, time, and time*group in terms of the outcome variables with ALT, AST, and ALP as dependent factors, intervention groups as within and time as between-subject factors and fasting blood glucose, serum cholesterol, triglycerides, waist circumference, waist: hip ratio, and serum vitamin D at baseline as covariates.In this study, only three participants had vitamin D levels higher than 30 ng/ml. After performing sensitivity analysis, excluding these three participants did not significantly affect the results of the statistical analyses. Therefore, in order to obtain a homogeneity in terms of serum vitamin D levels, these three participants were excluded from the study.All statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 16. A 