Share on PinterestA review observed that melancholy and inadequate mental health and fitness are connected to a better risk of cardiovascular disorder amid youthful adults. Shestock/Getty Images
A research of a lot more than 50 percent a million younger grown ups located that melancholy is linked to a higher hazard of cardiovascular illness and lousy cardiovascular well being.
Individuals who described often currently being frustrated experienced a drastically bigger danger of coronary heart challenges.
Depression is recognised to lead to unhealthy behaviors that might have an affect on one’s heart, and getting heart problems can direct to despair, a problematic cycle.
A examine of in excess of 50 {cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} a million individuals aged 18 to 49 finds a strong association among despair and cardiovascular disease and inadequate cardiovascular wellbeing.
Examine participants who documented acquiring 1 to 13 times of poor mental well being in the previous 30 days experienced 1.5 occasions the cardiovascular ailment hazard of these reporting no this kind of times.
For these reporting 14 to 30 days of very poor mental wellbeing, the chance of cardiovascular disorder was even better: 2.3 situations the risk of people today reporting no these kinds of days.
The scientists also uncovered that the relationship in between despair and coronary heart troubles was unaffected by intercourse or urban/rural area.
“Being in a depressive condition or feeling down can make one particular skip a meal or overindulge in comfort and ease foodstuff, have slumber problems, smoke, or not want to workout, and these are all hazard elements for bad cardiovascular health and cardiovascular illness,” stated the study’s direct creator Dr. Yaa A. Kwapong.
The authors pointed out that the cross-sectional review will take no situation on regardless of whether depression causes heart challenges or that coronary heart issues guide to melancholy. It is possible both of those are correct, commonly.
A human being with diagnosed or perceptible coronary heart problems also may gravitate toward equivalent behaviors.
Dr. Kwapong stated suboptimal coronary heart health and fitness in the research was described as two or more of the next hazard aspects for individuals who had not so far been diagnosed with cardiovascular disorder:
hypertension
diabetic issues
being a smoker
obesity
superior cholesterol
physical inactivity
not eating adequate fruits and vegetables
Dr. Kwapong mentioned despair might also have a more immediate result on coronary heart wellbeing:
“Physiologically, melancholy or temper conditions boost one’s pressure hormones, inflammation, and have an effect on glucose and lipid homeostasis, which may well all with time direct to cardiovascular illness.”
Dr. Yu-Ming Ni, cardiologist of Non-Invasive Cardiology at MemorialCare Coronary heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Health care Center in Fountain Valley, CA, was not included in the analyze. He supplied an illustration of depression’s physiological action on the heart.
Dr. Ni described “broken-coronary heart syndrome” as a issue that happens after critical trauma, normally ahead of enough time for harmful behaviors to take their toll. Most broken-coronary heart clients can be productively treated.
“They come into the hospital, the heart is not squeezing incredibly perfectly, and they can be quick of breath, have chest pain. Drinking water can accumulate in the system, and we have to give drugs to drain the h2o out and make improvements to the coronary heart purpose,” Dr. Ni explained. “It’s just yet another typical example of how grief and psychological trauma can affect the hazard for heart sickness.”
Although the syndrome’s mechanics stay unclear, Dr. Ni mentioned the surge of hormones in the sympathetic anxious system that can take place with intense emotional duress. He also suspected improved amounts of cortisol are included.
At the similar time, he asserted that the new examine builds on the insights introduced in the global INTERHEART analyze executed concerning 1999 and 2003. That task encompassed all the world’s locations and main ethnic groups. It observed that globally 90{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the possibility of coronary heart attacks could be attributed to modifiable chance factors.
For persons with any of the poor coronary heart wellbeing chance aspects listed above who are vulnerable to despair, the review underscores the worth of in search of qualified assist with one’s psychological health.
As Dr. Kwapong noted:
“This analyze highlights the intersection of psychological health and cardiovascular overall health and provides to the body of literature about the relevance of psychological/ psychological wellbeing in advertising and marketing cardiovascular Health and fitness.”
The American Coronary heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 emphasizes psychological health, included Dr. Kwapong.
Dr. Ni recommended that one particular can test to catalog the despair-triggering stresses in one’s existence.
It’s not a issue of how a great deal strain you have, but how it affects you, he reported.
Occasionally, he pointed out, we get applied to this kind of stressors, whether we like them or not. Dr. Ni also pointed out the advantage of having a healthy social circle and psychological support if achievable.
It is also a very good idea to enable one’s health practitioner or cardiologist know about the psychological issues a person may possibly be getting, he included.
As a cardiologist, he said:
“I want to get to know you improved. I want to know how you are dealing with [your] clinical problems, and how you’re managing issues at household since that will support me to know how finest to take care of you.”
Share on PinterestStatins can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by lowering the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood. clubfoto/Getty Images
Statins were first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1987.
Updated guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) suggest that statins benefit those ages 40 to 75 with at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
However, questions remain about who exactly can benefit from them.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability globally, and there have been concerted efforts for decades to prevent and minimize its impact.
Lifestyle interventions are important for preventing cardiovascular disease, with smoking, obesity, diabetes, lack of physical exercise, and excessive consumption of alcohol all increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Statins are also an important pharmaceutical option for lowering cardiovascular disease in people at risk. It was estimated that more than 173 million people took statins in 2018.
Evidence published in the journal The Lancet in 2010 shows that reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 1mmol/L with statins reduces the risks of ischaemic heart disease and stroke by 24{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} to 25{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}.
Statins reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by lowering the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood. Too much LDL cholesterol can build up as “plaques” in your blood vessels and narrow their diameter. Over time this narrowing can block blood flow to certain organs. If blood flow to the heart is blocked, it can cause a heart attack, and if it occurs in the brain, it can cause an ischemic stroke.
Targeting the right patients with statins is key to gaining the most benefit. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently published its Recommendation Statement for Statin Use for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Adults in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The recommendations were both slightly more conservative but also very similar to existing recommendations by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA).
The new guidance was published following an evidence review that included 22 randomized clinical trials, including additional data from three randomized control trials not included in the last set of guidelines published in 2016. On the back of this, they have issued three main recommendations for clinicians dealing with patients.
They advised:
Statin use would yield moderate benefit for those ages 40-75 with one or more factors that could increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, no history of cardiovascular disease, and an estimated 10-year cardiovascular event risk of 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} or greater.
Those of the same age with the same risk factors with a 10-year cardiovascular event risk factor of 7.5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} to 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} will have a small net benefit from taking statins.
However, there was not enough evidence to determine whether it’s beneficial to initiate statin use in those older than 75.
Dr. Edo Paz, cardiologist and VP of Medical at K Health, told Medical News Today in an email:
“In these updated guidelines, the USPSTF recommends that clinicians assess a patient’s risk of having a cardiovascular event (like a heart attack or stroke) to decide which patients should be treated with statin therapy.
The ACC/AHA also gives additional guidance around the intensity of statin therapy, differentiating between moderate and high intensity options. Overall, the USPSTF guidelines are a bit simpler, as it is geared to all primary care doctors, rather than to cardiologists.”
In the same week, a model was presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2022 which echoed the findings of the review, supporting the use of statins in patients over 40 with high cardiovascular disease risk.
The study created a model using data from 118,000 participants of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration and 500,000 individuals from the UK Biobank. It looked specifically at the difference between continuing statins for life, compared to stop taking them at 80, as there is little evidence of their value in people older than age 75.
Lead author Dr. Runguo Wu of the Queen Mary University of London said: “Our study suggests that people who start taking statins in their 50s but stop at 80 years of age instead of continuing lifelong will lose 73{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the QALY benefit if they are at relatively low cardiovascular risk and 36{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} if they are at high cardiovascular risk – since those at elevated risk start to benefit earlier.
“Women’s cardiovascular risk is generally lower than men’s. This means that for women, most of the lifelong benefit from statins occurs later in life, and stopping therapy prematurely is likely more detrimental than for men.”
Rather than suggest that statin treatment was potentially controversial, clinicians should focus on the areas where statin guidelines overlap, said Prof. Salim Virani, professor of Cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, and one of the authors of the ACC/AHA Primary Prevention Guideline from 2018.
In an editorial published by the JAMA in the same issue as the USPSTF Recommendation Statement, Prof. Virani outlined that the review of the data did not find “any significant harm associated with statin therapy,” and called the recommendations “sensible and practical.”
In an interview with MNT, he explained that the main difference between these guidelines and the 2018 ACC/AHA guidelines was over whether the cut-off for introducing statins was for people with a 7.5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease as is the case with the ACC/AHA guidelines, or 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} as is the case with the most recent guidelines from the US Preventive Services Task Force.
“Most of the patients whose 10-year risk is 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} or higher, well, they have to be treated based on both the guidelines,” said Prof. Virani. He added that further modeling of how many people these slight differences would affect was due to be published in the coming weeks.
Prof. Virani explained that individual risk factors needed to be considered by clinicians and patients when considering whether or not they needed to initiate statin treatment. While risk factors such as obesity and diabetes were considered in both sets of guidelines, the guidelines from USPSTF did not mention South East Asian ancestry or pre-eclampsia, or the risks for postmenopausal women for example.
“Last but not the least, the ACC/AHA guidelines have what we call these risk enhancers, which are factors that are not there when somebody is doing their tenure risk calculation but might be important for a patient, for example, a patient having family history of premature cardiovascular disease, those patients need to be treated early, and the ACC/AHA guidelines account for those factors as well, which is notion the US Preventive Services Task Force recommendations.”
Share on PinterestWhat is the link between serious mental health conditions and cardiovascular health? Sergey Filimonov/Stocksy
A new study finds that people with serious mental health conditions have an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease throughout adulthood.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for people with serious mental illness.
The long-term risk of heart disease over 30 years more than doubles for people with serious mental illness.
People with serious mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or schizoaffective disorder, die 10 to 20 years earlier, on average, than individuals without those conditions. The leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease.
A new study assesses their 30-year, adult lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease, plus their 10-year risk.
The research finds that even people aged 18–36 years who have these mental health conditions are at a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The lead author of the study is Dr. Rebecca C. Rossom, senior behavioral health research investigator at HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis, MN. She explains:
“Even at younger ages, people with serious mental illness had a higher risk of heart disease than their peers, which highlights the importance of addressing cardiovascular risk factors for these individuals as early as possible. Interventions to address heart disease risk for these individuals are maximally beneficial when initiated at younger ages.”
“Our study,” says Dr. Rossom, “focused on the contribution of cardiovascular risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, body mass index [BMI], and smoking status, to compare overall heart disease risk for people with and without serious mental illness.”
“Right now,” says Dr. Rossom, “estimates of 10-year heart disease risk are used most frequently, and they cannot be applied until people are at least 40 years old, which is too late to start addressing heart disease risk in people with serious mental illness.”
“We encourage healthcare systems and clinicians to use the 30-year cardiovascular risk estimates for young adults with serious mental illness, as these may be used starting at age 18.”
The 30-year cardiovascular risk for people with serious mental health conditions was 25{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}, more than double the 11{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} risk for individuals without these conditions.
After adjusting for sex, age, race, ethnicity, and insurer, the researchers found that compared with people without serious mental health conditions:
People with schizoaffective disorder had the highest 30-year cardiovascular risk.
Those with bipolar disorder had the highest 10-year cardiovascular risk.
Of people with serious mental health conditions, 15{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} had hypertension, compared with 13{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of individuals without one of these conditions.
The study also found that people with serious mental health conditions were three times more likely to be smokers than individuals without those conditions. It also found that half were likely to be obese compared with 36{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of those without serious mental health conditions.
The study tracked 591,257 individuals. Of the total group, 2{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}, or 11,333 people, had bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or schizoaffective disorder.
Seventy percent of those with serious mental health conditions had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, 18{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} had schizoaffective disorder, and 12{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} had schizophrenia.
People with serious mental health conditions were more likely to be female and younger and identify as Black, Native American, Alaskan, or multiracial. They were also more likely to have insurance from Medicare or Medicaid.
Dr. Rossom told Medical News Today:
“Some of the challenges involved in supporting the overall health of people with [serious mental health conditions] include patients and clinicians not being aware of the increased medical risks that people with [these conditions] carry (including an elevated risk of CV disease).”
Other challenges include “not recognizing how some of our treatments can increase these risks (including some medications used to treat [mental health conditions], which can increase cardiometabolic risk), and not feeling able to meaningfully intervene even when these increased risks are recognized.”
“All of these issues can lead to disparities in health outcomes,” summarized Dr. Rossom.
Therefore, as clinical professor René Ernst Nielsen, of Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark, who was not involved in the study, explained to MNT:
“These patients should perhaps be seen as at special risk, and the level for initiating diagnostic procedures, prophylactic treatment, treatment of risk factors and treatment of existing conditions should perhaps be reduced.”
Prof. Nielsen also pointed out the “risk of diagnostic overshadowing — when the patient is seen by the psychiatrist, the focus is mainly [or] only on the psychiatric symptoms, and physical health is neglected. Similarly, when a patient with a serious mental health condition is seen in the ER, there is an increased risk of interpreting the symptoms as [being] caused by the serious mental health condition.”
“There might be,” added Prof. Nielsen, “a negative attitude toward patients with serious mental health conditions.”
He explained, “They may be perceived as more dangerous, not easy to talk to, and less able to report relevant information, which might be caused by clinicians’ lack of knowledge concerning mental disorders.”
Dr. Rossom is also the lead author of another new study of the possible cardiovascular benefits of clinical support systems optimized for people with serious mental health conditions. She told MNT:
“Our study demonstrates that giving patients with [serious mental health conditions] and clinicians personalized, prioritized summaries of their [cardiovascular] risk status, along with patient-specific suggestions to improve care, resulted in intervention patients having 4{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} lower [cardiovascular] risk than control patients at 1 year. We were particularly excited to see that the intervention favored patients with [serious mental health conditions] who were in the youngest age group — ages 18–29.”
Share on PinterestA new study searches for links between vitamin D supplements, cancer, and heart disease. Raymond Forbes LLC/Stocksy
Initial research has suggested that vitamin D may reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and cancer.
However, there have been few large, higher-quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to corroborate this.
A recent RCT examined the effects of vitamin D supplementation in Finland.
It found no association between vitamin D supplementation and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer.
Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium, which improves bone strength. Among other roles, it also contributes to the functioning of muscles, nerves, and the immune system.
Many scientists have set out to understand how vitamin D deficiency and supplementation may influence disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is some evidence that vitamin D may help protect against respiratory tract infections, for example.
Over the past 2 years, researchers have also explored whether vitamin D reduces the risks associated with COVID-19. Although investigations are ongoing, there seems to be some evidence that these supplements might improve intensive care unit admission rates.
Two other areas of particular interest are vitamin D’s potential effects on cardiovascular disease and cancer risk. However, few RCTs have looked into this. These types of studies are the gold standard for identifying causal relationships in scientific research.
Speaking with Medical News Today, Vimal Karani, a professor of nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics at the University of Reading, in the United Kingdom, confirmed that there has been a gap between the initial research and findings from clinical trials.
Prof. Karani was not involved in the recent study but has worked with some of its authors.
He explained that past large epidemiological studies “have established a link between vitamin D deficiency and the risk of [cardiovascular disease] traits in various ethnic groups.” This, he said, suggests that vitamin D supplements might lower cardiovascular risk.
“However,” he continued, “clinical trials have not provided convincing evidence of the blood pressure-lowering effect of vitamin D supplementation.”
Prof. Karani said that there could be a wide range of reasons for this, including “differences in the sample size, duration of supplementation, dose of the supplementation, age of the participants, geographical location, sun exposure, and the outcome measures. Further research is required to replicate the findings in multiple ethnic groups.”
To provide further evidence of the relationship between vitamin D, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, the researchers behind the present study conducted the Finnish Vitamin D Trial.
This took place between 2012 and 2018, and it was double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled.
“When we started to plan the trial, there was a lot of evidence from observational studies that vitamin D deficiency would be associated with nearly all major chronic diseases, such as [cardiovascular disease], cancer, type 2 diabetes, and also mortality,” said Dr. Jyrki Virtanen in an interview with Medical News Today.
Dr. Virtanen is an associate professor of nutrition and public health at the University of Eastern Finland, and a co-principal investigator of the study.
“Also, we had shown that among [the] Eastern Finnish population, low vitamin D content of the body was associated with higher risk of mortality and glucose metabolism disturbances. However, these kinds of studies do not give evidence for causality.”
“At that time, there was little evidence from RCTs that improvement of [the] vitamin D status of the body with vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of diseases.”
“Therefore, our aim was to start a long-term vitamin D supplementation trial in Finland, where vitamin D insufficiency had been quite prevalent due to the long winter, and investigate whether vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of major chronic diseases and death.”
The researchers looked at data from 2,495 people, including male participants 60 years or older and female participants who were postmenopausal and 65 years or older. The participants also had no history of cardiovascular disease or cancer.
The participants either took a placebo, vitamin D at a dosage of 1,600 international units (IU) each day, or vitamin D at a dosage of 3,200 IU each day.
Compared with the placebo, neither dosage of vitamin D reduced the incidence of cardiovascular disease or cancer in this cohort, the team determined.
One factor that complicated this analysis was that the participants tended to have high levels of vitamin D at the start of the study. This, the authors believe, stems from the implementation of policies to fortify foods with vitamin D in Finland, which began in 2003–2011.
“It is likely that vitamin D supplementation does not provide major health benefits, especially in populations where the vitamin D situation is already good at the start of the trial.”
– Dr. Jyrki Virtanen
“A ‘problem’ with most large vitamin D supplementation trials has been that the starting levels of vitamin D have been pretty high in a large part of the study populations,” explained Dr. Virtanen.
“This may reflect the well-known fact that people who take part in these kinds of studies tend to be more health-conscious and more interested in their health, so they are, on average, healthier than the average population.”
“They may have a better diet and are more likely to take supplements and exercise, which all are associated also with higher serum vitamin D levels,” he told MNT.
“Those who might benefit from the vitamin D supplementation — i.e., those with low serum vitamin D levels — are a small minority in the trials. It is tricky to target this deficient population, though, because for ethical reasons it would not be possible to screen people and only admit people with low vitamin D levels in the trial. It would not be ethical to keep a part of the study population, the placebo group, deficient [in] vitamin D for several years.”
They explained that despite the low recruitment levels — the study authors had hoped to recruit 30,000 participants — the results showed some signs that vitamin D had health benefits.
“Even though recruitment was challenging and didn’t meet expectations, there is some indication that the cohort investigated had lower incidence of both [cardiovascular disease] and cancer, compared to national statistics, which would have been gathered prefortification.”
“This may indicate that improvements to vitamin D status nationally are having benefits to the overall health of the population over and above the well-known bone and muscle health effects. Because of the low numbers recruited, the cohort may not be nationally representative, and care should be taken when interpreting these findings,” said the scientists.
According to Prof. Karani: “The unique feature of this RCT was the use of two different vitamin D doses to see the dose-response effect over a period of 5 years. Despite the large doses, the study failed to see any effect of the supplementation on lowering the incidence of [cardiovascular disease] and cancer.”
“The findings have significant public health implications,” continued Prof. Karani. “However, the findings cannot be generalized to other populations, given that [the] Finnish population is a well-known example of an isolated population, where multiple bottlenecks resulting from consecutive founder effects have led to the gene pool of current-day Finns.”
Dr. Virtanen said that while there is some evidence of broader health benefits from vitamin D supplementation, there were also conflicting findings.
“At the moment, there is no consensus [about] what would be the optimal vitamin D intake and [whether it is] the same for all health outcomes and for all people. For example, there is some evidence that high-dose vitamin D supplementation may modestly reduce the risk of cancer death, but not overall cancer incidence.”
“And although there, so far, is no evidence that vitamin D supplementation could prevent [SARS-CoV-2] infection, it is well-documented that those, especially with the severe form of COVID-19, have low serum vitamin D levels.”
“It is also possible that this is a consequence of the [SARS-CoV-2] infection rather than the cause, because it is known that acute infection leads to lower serum vitamin D levels, and many of the COVID-19 patients are overweight or obese or have a chronic disease like type 2 diabetes, which all are associated with lower serum vitamin D levels,” explained Dr. Virtanen.
Prof. Strain, Dr. McSorley, and Dr. Magee highlighted the role that vitamin D may play in a healthy immune system.
“There is recent strong evidence that vitamin D supports your immune system, and given the global pandemic, it does appear that those who are vitamin D replete don’t have as severe a response to COVID-19 as those who are deficient — and importantly, recover quicker.”
“Vitamin D plays a key role in musculoskeletal health. Vitamin D can be obtained via sunlight and dietary sources. However, a vitamin D supplement may be required to meet the recommended dietary intakes — that is, 600 IU per day in the United States for those aged 1–70 years, and 800 IU per day for those over 70 years — in order to maintain a sufficient status.”
“Supplementation may be particularly relevant in populations residing at northerly latitudes, where vitamin D cannot be synthesized from sunlight during the winter months, and in populations that spend little time outdoors and/or obtain limited amounts of vitamin D from food sources.”
“It is very difficult to obtain vitamin D from food intake alone, unless that food is fortified with vitamin D. Furthermore, those with illnesses that affect vitamin D absorption may require vitamin D supplementation,” said the scientists.
Prof. Strain, Dr. McSorley, and Dr. Magee suggested that the research could be developed by studying a population with low levels of vitamin D.
“This research needs to be undertaken in a suitable population, where many have a low vitamin D status and can therefore benefit from vitamin D supplementation.”
“It would be important to explore whether vitamin D supplementation can decrease the incidence of [cardiovascular disease] and cancers, as that would make a strong case for mandatory vitamin D fortification or promotion of fortified foods in the population.”
“There is some tantalizing evidence that the Finnish national [vitamin D] fortification program is having benefits by decreasing the incidence of [cardiovascular disease] and cancers, as well as the expected beneficial effects on bone health.”
“Another very important area that needs to be explored further is the link between sufficient vitamin D status and a fully functional immune system, especially in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic.”
As Prof. Karani notes, “A similar RCT with a longer duration of vitamin D supplementation is highly warranted in ethnically diverse populations to see if the findings from the present study could be generalized.”
Dr. Virtanen told MNT that his current focus is on further analyzing the results from the Finnish Vitamin D Trial.
“At the moment, we don’t have plans to start another vitamin D trial, but we are of course going to publish several other results from the Finnish Vitamin D Trial, for example effects [on] heart arrhythmias, infections, type 2 diabetes, falls and fractures, pain, [and] mood changes.”
