Study Reveals Another Condition Vitamin D Pills Don't Help

Vitamin pills do not prevent bone fractures in most people and do not protect against many other diseases, adding to questions about medical advice that many now take for granted.

The idea made so much sense that it was accepted almost without a doubt: vitamin D pills can protect fracture bones. After all, the body needs the vitamin for the intestine to absorb calcium, which bones need to grow and stay healthy.

But now , in the first large randomized controlled study in the United States, funded by the federal government, researchers report that vitamin D pills taken with or without calcium have no effect on bone fracture rates. The findings, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, hold for people with osteoporosis and even those whose blood tests found them to be vitamin D deficient.

These findings follow other findings from the same study which found no support for a long list of purported benefits of vitamin D supplements.

So, for the millions of Americans who take vitamin D supplements and the labs that perform more than 10 million vitamin D tests each year, an editorial published with the article offers some advice: Stop.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">"Providers should stop screening for 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels or recommend vitamin D supplements and people should stop taking vitamin D supplements in order to prevent major illnesses or to prolong life,” wrote the Dr. Steven R. Cummings, researcher at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, and Dr. Clifford Rosen. , a principal investigator at the MaineH Institute for Health Research. Dr. Rosen is editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

There are exceptions, they say: people with conditions like celiac disease or Crohn's disease need vitamin D supplements, as do those who live in conditions where they are deprived of sunlight and may not eat enough foods regularly supplemented with vitamin D, such as cereals and dairy products to help them absorb calcium.

Being in such a severe state of vitamin D deficiency is "very hard to do in the general population," said the Dr. Cummings.

The two scientists know that by making such strong statements, they are attacking vitamin vendors, testing labs and advocates who have claimed that taking vitamin D, often in huge amounts, can cure or prevent a variety of ailments and even help people live longer.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Doctors often check vitamin D levels as part of routine blood tests.

The study involved 25,871 participants (men ages 50 and older and women ages 55 and older) who were required to take 2,000 international units of vitamin D daily or a placebo.

The research was part of a comprehensive vitamin D study called VITAL. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health and started after a panel of experts convened by what is now the National Academy of Medicine, a nonprofit organization, looked at the health effects of supplements. of vitamin D and found little evidence. The members of the expert panel were supposed to propose a minimum daily requirement for the vitamin, but found that most clinical trials that had studied the subject were inadequate, leading them to wonder if there was a part of truth in claims that vitamin D improved health.

The prevailing view at the time was that vitamin D was likely to prevent bone fractures. Researchers believed that as vitamin D levels decreased, parathyroid hormone levels would increase to the detriment of bone.

Dr. Rosen said those concerns led him and other members of the National Academy of Medicine's expert panel to set what he called an "arbitrary value" of