Even high dose of Vitamin D does not benefit bone health: JAMA

High-dose vitamin D supplements don't appear to improve bone mineral density in healthy adults and may even have a negative impact. The study has appeared in JAMA .

One of most common and well accepted benefit of Vitamin D has been it's positive effect on bone health.

The researchers investigated whether higher-dose vitamin D supplementation improve bone mineral density (BMD, measured using high-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography) and bone strength (measured as failure load) or not.

Few studies have assessed the effects of daily vitamin D doses at or above the tolerable upper intake level for 12 months or greater, yet 3% of US adults report vitamin D intakes of at least 4000 IU per day.

In this randomized clinical trial that included 311 healthy adults aged 55 to 70 years,treatment with vitamin D55 to 70 for 3 years at a dose of 4000 IU per day or 10 000 IU per day was compared with 400 IU per day.

Co-primary outcomes were total volumetric BMD at radius and tibia, assessed with high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography, and bone strength (failure load) at radius and tibia estimated by finite element analysis.

The researchers found that Higher dose of vitamin D (10,000 IU and 4000 IU) was associated with greater bone mineral density loss at the radius than 400 IU daily (-7.5 and -3.9 mg hydroxyapatite/cm3, respectively.

The authors concluded:

Among healthy adults, treatment with vitamin D for 3 years at a dose of 4000 IU per day or 10 000 IU per day, compared with 400 IU per day, resulted in statistically significant lower radial BMD; tibial BMD was significantly lower only with the 10 000 IU per day dose. There were no significant differences in bone strength at either the radius or tibia. These findings do not support a benefit of high-dose vitamin D supplementation for bone health; further research would be needed to determine whether it is harmful.

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doi:10.1001/jama.2019.11889