No Value for Routine Vitamin D Supplementation

Enthusiasm for recommending vitamin D supplementation to prevent a wide range of skeletal and extraskeletal disorders was diminished considerably by three publications in 2018.

In VITAL (Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial), researchers randomized nearly 26,000 middle-aged and older adults with no history of cardiovascular (CV) disease, cancer, or other serious disorders to receive vitamin D₃ (2000 IU daily) or placebo. Mean serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level increased in vitamin D₃ recipients only. During median follow-up of 5 years, major adverse CV events and invasive cancer occurred with equal frequencies in the two groups (NEJM JW Gen Med Dec 15 2018 and N Engl J Med 2018 Nov 10; [e-pub]). The VITAL researchers are expected to report eventually on…