2023-07-10 09:10:22
According to a large Australian study(1) conducted between 2014 and 2020 among 21,315 Australian volunteers, aged 60 to 84, taking a vitamin D supplement may reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular events such as heart attacks in the elderly. In this double-blind randomized trial (neither the participants nor the caregivers knew which treatment they were receiving or administering), 10,662 participants received 60,000 IU/month of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) per month and 10,653, a placebo, the two given orally in tablet form at the beginning of the month. Annual monitoring of serum 25(OH)D levels was performed. The protocol was planned for 5 years.
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Fewer heart attacks…
During the trial, 1,336 people experienced a major cardiovascular event (heart attack or stroke): 699 (6.6%) in the placebo group and 637 (6%) in the vitamin D group. Which represents, for 1000 supplemented, 5.8 fewer events. Supplementing 172 elderly people with vitamin D thus made it possible to prevent a major cardiovascular event… The myocardial infarction rate was 19% lower in the vitamin D group. However, there was no difference in risk for stroke between the two groups.
The researchers, suggesting that their results – which remain statistically insignificant – probably underestimate the potential effect of vitamin D supplementation, point out the limits of their trial: Australians, due to the sun, are less prone than other populations in the world to vitamin D deficiency. Previous studies estimate, for example, that 40% of the Australian population(2) has a serum concentration of vitamin D considered to be optimum (greater than 75 nmol/L), once morest only 20% of the French population(3). Moreover, the participants in the therapeutic trial, recruited by advertisement, were also in better health than the general population of the country. They had fewer cardiovascular events overall, being less likely to be smokers, but also were less often treated with statins.
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More protective of the most fragile
The authors point out that the protective effect of vitamin D was greater in participants considered to be at cardiovascular riski.e. already taking treatments such as statins. They therefore evoke the probable benefit of supplementing vitamin D with people receiving such treatments.
Additional studies are obviously required, but this large study contradicts the studies which previously showed that vitamin D supplementation had no effect on cardiovascular function… For example, this meta-analysis published in 2019 conducted on 83,291 participants, but which concerned the administration of low doses of vitamin D, or even the VITAL test, published the same year, and which focused on vitamin D and omega 3 supplementation, but excluded people with a history of cardiovascular disease…
If we now know that the vitamin D3 is more effective than vitamin D2 to increase vitamin D levels in the body, it is also assumed that its metabolite (the form it takes following passing through the liver), the calcifédiol, is even more so in older patients. To be continued, then…
Read also Vitamin D: D3 more effective than D2?
Read also Vitamin D in the elderly: one form of D3 more effective than another?
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