This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Vitamin D supplementation fails to lower BP
Vitamin D does not appear to be effective as a means of lowering BP, either in individual patients or as a population-level intervention, according to recent findings.
“In the 5 years since the first meta-analyses were published, a proliferation of randomized clinical trials has studied vitamin D and CV health,” the researchers wrote. “We therefore sought to update a systematic review of randomized clinical trials to evaluate whether vitamin D supplementation reduces BP when compared with placebo across a range of study populations and vitamin D analogues.”
Researchers evaluated data from randomized clinical trials that reported data on BP or other measures of vascular function, in which patients also received vitamin D supplementation for a minimum of 4 weeks and levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D were reported. A total of 46 trials of 4,541 participants were collected, with patient-level data available for 27 studies of 3,092 participants.
Evaluated data included demographic information and levels of systolic and diastolic BP and 25-hydroxyvitamin D. The primary outcome was change to systolic and diastolic BP between baseline and completion of follow-up.
In a trial-level analysis, the researchers observed no effect of vitamin D supplementation on systolic (effect size, 0.0 mm Hg [95% CI, −0.8 mm Hg to 0.8 mm Hg]) or diastolic BP (effect size, –0.1 mm Hg [95% CI, −0.6 mm Hg to 0.5 mm Hg]). Analysis of individual patient data yielded similar results for both systolic (effect size, –0.5 mm Hg [95% CI, −1.3 mm Hg to 0.4 mm Hg]) and diastolic BP (effect size, 0.2 mm Hg [95% CI −0.3 mm Hg to 0.7 mm Hg]). Results from subgroup analyses did not identify any baseline factor that predicted a better response to vitamin D supplementation at either the trial or patient level.
“The results of this analysis do not support the use of vitamin D or its analogues as an individual patient treatment for hypertension or as a population-level intervention to lower BP,” the researchers concluded. “The lack of efficacy of vitamin D treatment on BP also argues against routine measurement of [25-hydroxyvitamin D] levels in patients with hypertension.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.