Eva-Maria Pasieka/Corbis
Vitamin D protects against falls and osteoporotic fractures and has various other purported health benefits, including protection against cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. This has not been conclusively demonstrated, however.
A study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (online, 24 February 2015)[1]
suggests that serum levels of vitamin D have a complicated, non-linear, reverse-J-shaped association with CVD mortality. Analysis of nearly 250,000 Danish patients in primary practice, followed-up for seven years, found that CVD mortality risk was lowest at a vitamin D level of 70nmol/L (the mean level for the entire cohort was 49.5nmol/L).
CVD mortality risk was significantly increased at both the lower extreme (~12.5nmol/L) and the higher extreme (~125nmol/L), with adjusted hazard ratios of 2.0 and 1.3, respectively. Whether or not the association is causal is still to be determined.
References
[1] Durup D, Jørgensen HL, Christensen J et al. A reverse J-shaped association between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and cardiovascular disease mortality — the CopD-study. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 2015. doi:10.1210/jc.2014-4551
