Vitamin D, calcium supplements may decrease blood pressure in older adults with obesity
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Key takeaways:
- All participants who received calcium and vitamin D experienced a decrease in systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
- Participants with obesity had the greatest reductions in BP.
Vitamin D and calcium supplementation led to decreased blood pressure among older adults with overweight, especially those with obesity and hypertension, according to a post hoc analysis published in Journal of the Endocrine Society.
Additionally, the researchers found that high vitamin D doses did not provide additional health benefits.
Although previous research has shown that vitamin D deficiency is associated with cardiovascular disease, infections and cancer, the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and high BP has not been firmly established, especially among older adults with comorbidities, according to Ghada El-Hajj Fuleihan, MD, MPH, FRCP, professor of medicine and physician-scientist at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, and colleagues.
Researchers conducted a post hoc analysis of a completed multicenter, double-blind, randomized controlled trial to investigate the effect of high-dose cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) compared with National Academy of Medicine-recommended dose on the BP of older, overweight vitamin D-deficient adults.
The analysis included 221 participants (55% women; mean age, 71.1 years; mean BMI, 30.2 kg/m2) older than 65 years with a BMI greater than 25 kg/m2 who were recruited from outpatient departments, clinics, advertisements at teaching hospitals and health dispensaries in the Beirut area.
The researchers randomly assigned the participants to the low-dose (n = 111; 600 IU/day) or high-dose (n = 110; 3,750 IU/day) vitamin D3 group for 1 year; all participants also received 1,000 mg of elemental calcium daily. BP was measured every 3 months.
The researchers found that the overall group and high-dose group experienced statistically significant decreases in systolic BP and diastolic BP at 6-month and 1-year follow-up.
Specifically, at 1 year, researchers observed reductions in systolic BP of 3.5 mm Hg (P = .005) for the total study group and 4.2 mm Hg (P = .023) for the high-dose group, with a nonsignificant 2.8 mm Hg reduction in the low-dose group.
Researchers noted a “modest” 2.8 mm Hg (P = .002) reduction in diastolic BP for the overall group, with a 3.02 mm Hg (P = .01) reduction in the high-dose group and a nonsignificant 2.6 mm Hg reduction in the low-dose group.
For both diastolic and systolic BP, the difference in reduction between the low- and high-dose groups did not reach significance.
After stratifying participants by BMI, the researchers found that systolic BP decreased significantly among individuals with BMI greater than 30 kg/m2 in both dosage groups, although diastolic BP significantly decreased in only the high-dose group. Similarly, among the subgroup of patients with hypertension (n = 143) diastolic and systolic BP decreased significantly over time, independently of BMI levels.
Finally, Fuleihan and colleagues used multivariable linear mixed models with random effects to reveal that BMI (beta = 0.29; P = .05) and systolic BP at baseline (beta = 0.16; P < .001) predicted systolic BP at 6 and 12 months, although vitamin D dosage did not.
The researchers reported several limitations to this study, including that they had limited data on physical activity levels, the exploratory nature of the analyses, and the low power of the subgroup analyses.
“Our study findings and synthesis of the literature emphasize the importance of demographic factors (age) and underlying health conditions ... when interpreting the potential effects of vitamin D on BP outcome,” Fuleihan and colleagues wrote, adding that individual patient-level meta-analyses should be conducted to validate these results and evaluate the optimal vitamin D dose.
Reference:
- Vitamin D supplements may lower blood pressure in older people with obesity. https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2024/vitamin-d-supplements-may-lower-blood-pressure-in-older-people-with-obesity. Published Nov. 12, 2024. Accessed Nov. 20, 2024.
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