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Institute of Medicine vitamin D recommendation challenged
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The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine miscalculated the recommended dietary allowance for vitamin D by an order of magnitude, according to two groups of researchers.
Although the level of a nutrient needed to meet the health requirements of almost all healthy individuals is an estimate, a more accurate intake would be about 10 times the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation of 600 IU per day for individuals aged 1 to 70 years, according to a letters published in the journal Nutrients.
Using the same data analyzed by the IOM, Paul J. Veuglers, PhD, and John Paul Ekwaru, PhD, of the University of Alberta School of Public Health in Canada, calculated a dietary requirement of 8,895 IU of vitamin D per day.
Robert Heaney, MD, of Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and colleagues at other institutions examined data from the GrassrootsHealth database; their analysis yielded an estimate near 7,000 IU vitamin D per day — much closer to Veuglers’ and Ekwaru’s estimate than that of the IOM.
“Thus we confirm the findings of [Veuglers and Ekwaru] with regard to the published [recommended dietary allowance (RDA)] for vitamin D, and we call for the IOM and all public health authorities concerned with transmitting accurate nutritional information to the public to designate, as the RDA a value of approximately 7,000 IU per day from all sources,” Heaney and colleagues wrote. – by Jill Rollet
Disclosure: Heaney and colleagues report no relevant financial disclosures. Disclosures for Veuglers and Ekwaru could not be confirmed.
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