Vitamin D may significantly reduce risk of cancer death: BMJ

Vitamin D supplementation significantly reduces the risk of cancer death, finds a systematic review and meta-analysis.The new meta-analysis of Randomized controlled trials has been published in the BMJ.

The role of vitamin D in bone health has been known for over a century. More recent research has suggested that vitamin D may play a role in the muscular, immune, endocrine, and central nervous systems.Vitamin-D plays a vital role in the early development of a child. Not only having an optimum level of vitamin D is crucial to maintain calcium phosphate homeostasis but it is well established that suboptimal level of vitamin D is strongly associated with high blood pressure (BP) and subsequent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the later life.

Dr Yu Zuang and associates conducted a Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to investigate whether vitamin D supplementation is associated with lower mortality in adults.They searched data sources like Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register from their inception to 26 December 2018 and selected randomised controlled trials comparing Vitamin D supplementation with a placebo or no treatment for mortality were included. Independent data extraction was conducted and study quality assessed. A meta-analysis was carried out by using fixed effects and random effects models to calculate risk ratio of death in the group receiving vitamin D supplementation and the control group.

The researchers identified 52 trials with a total of 75 454 participants . Vitamin D supplementation was not associated with all cause mortality , cardiovascular mortality , or non-cancer, non-cardiovascular mortality .

Vitamin D supplementation statistically significantly reduced the risk of cancer death . In subgroup analyses, all cause mortality was significantly lower in trials with vitamin D3supplementation than in trials with vitamin D2 supplementation ; neither vitamin D3 nor vitamin D2 was associated with a statistically significant reduction in all cause mortality.

The researchers concluded that Vitamin D supplementation alone was not associated with all cause mortality in adults compared with placebo or no treatment. Vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of cancer death by 16%. They however felt that additional large clinical studies are needed to determine whether vitamin D supplementation is associated with lower all cause mortality