Monday, April 23, 2012

Vitamin D isn't the Cure for Everything

Surprise, surprise, surprise!  Vitamin D isn't the cure for everything that we'd hoped it to be.  While it's been demonstrated to improve bone mineral density & decrease fall/fracture rates, and has been associated with lower rates of heart disease & various cancers, two recent studies demonstrated no benefit to academic performance nor to prevention of childhood pneumonia.

Apparently the wheels fell off the wagon earlier this month when a prospective cohort study was published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health in which the authors followed 3,171 children at 10yo with measures of academic performance repeated at 13-14yo & 15-16yo.  Vitamin D levels at 10yo were not associated with academic performance but in fact vitamin D was negatively associated with a (not statistically significant) worsening of academic performance.  While the authors did not conjure this possibility, I envision that high vitamin D levels might be due to playing outside rather than studying inside which would have led to higher academic performance.

At the same time, a randomized placebo-controlled trial was also published earlier this month in the Lancet concluding that vitamin D supplementation did not prevent pneumonia in vitamin D deficient Afghan infants.  The authors had randomized 1,524 children 1-11mo to 100,000 units of vitamin D3 every quarter for 18 months compared to 1,522 similar children who received placebo in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, no difference was seen in incidence or severity of childhood pneumonia, hospital admission rates, and all-cause mortality.

So while we debate the potentially pleomorphic benefits of vitamin D, let's not expect world peace, much less improvement in academic performance nor decrease in childhood pneumonia.



Health
Top Blogs

No comments:

Post a Comment