Vitamin D supplements appear to provide little to no benefit for maintaining bone health, according to researchers behind the largest and most comprehensive review of evidence to date. The authors suggest that public health recommendations encouraging everyone to take vitamin D supplements during winter months may need to be reconsidered.
The findings dispute long-standing assumptions about the role of vitamin D in strengthening bones and may surprise many people who regularly take the supplement believing it supports their skeletal health. To reach their conclusions, the researchers conducted an extensive meta-analysis, combining data from 81 individual studies to ensure the most reliable and thorough results possible.
After reviewing the evidence, the authors found no solid proof that vitamin D supplementation improves bone health for the general population. The only clear benefits were observed in individuals at high risk of developing certain rare bone-related conditions. For most people, however, the study indicates that routine vitamin D supplementation is unlikely to offer meaningful protection for bone strength.
The Department of Health currently says everyone should consider taking a vitamin D supplement for their bone health in the winter months, between October and March, if they cannot get enough by exposure to sunlight. That includes all infants and children from six months to five years. It is based on findings from the government’s scientific advisory committee on nutrition (SACN) in July 2016, which did not conclude there were other proven health benefits.
The new meta-analysis is published in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal and led by the longstanding experts on vitamin D Profs Mark Bolland and Andrew Grey from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Prof Alison Avenell of Aberdeen University.
Bolland said things have changed since 2014, when the last major review of the evidence was carried out. In the last four years, “more than 30 randomised controlled trials on vitamin D and bone health have been published, nearly doubling the evidence base available,” he said.
“Our meta-analysis finds that vitamin D does not prevent fractures, falls or improve bone mineral density, whether at high or low dose.”
He said the advice given by doctors and government health departments around the world recommending vitamin D and saying it is helpful in osteoporosis or brittle bone disease, which afflicts older people, should now be altered. “Clinical guidelines should be changed to reflect these findings,” he said.
He said further trials looking at the effects of vitamin D on bone health would be pointless. “On the strength of existing evidence, we believe there is little justification for more trials of vitamin D supplements looking at musculoskeletal outcomes,” he said.
Everybody needs vitamin D; the question is whether we should get it from supplements. It is made in the body naturally as a result of exposure to sunlight, which is why people living in northern climates and those who cover up their skin may have lower levels than they should. It is also contained in a small number of foods, such as cod liver oil, offal, egg yolk and oily fish including salmon and mackerel.
The studies that have been done are mostly in older people who could be at risk of osteoporosis (brittle bone disease), but Avenell said there is no evidence of benefit for any adults – apart from those few who are at high risk of osteomalacia, a form of rickets in adults.
“I do think they should change the guidance,” she said. “We don’t think that the population needs to take vitamin D supplementation, because trials don’t show it has any benefit in protecting against falls and fractures or all the other things vitamin D is supposed to protect you against.
“There’s no harm in taking low-dose vitamin D supplements as far as we know, but if [the government’s nutrition advisers] really believed it has important effects, surely they should be recommending that there should be fortification of food.”
They were not talking about the effects of supplements in children and young people, she said, because there had not been trials. They were also very clear, she said, that people who were never exposed to the sun because they covered themselves up or were institutionalised were at risk of vitamin D deficiency.
“The context for this analysis lies in the fact that many patients (and doctors) have been persuaded by various studies and social media that vitamin D is a cure-all,” said J Chris Gallagher of the Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, USA, in a linked comment in the journal.
“This thinking is reminiscent of the fervour that supported the widespread use of vitamin A, vitamin C and vitamin E years ago, and all of those vitamin trials later proved to be clinically negative.
“The authors should be complimented on an important updated analysis on musculoskeletal health, but already I can hear the fervent supporters – what about the extra-skeletal benefits of vitamin D?”
According to the SACN, there have been suggestions that vitamin D can help with a number of other “extra-skeletal” health issues, including cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, infectious diseases, neuropsychological functioning, oral health and age-related macular degeneration, although the did not find convincing evidence for any of these. Gallagher believes studies now taking place will answer those questions.
“Within three years we might have that answer because there are approximately 100,000 participants currently enrolled in randomised, placebo-controlled trials of vitamin D supplementation,” he wrote. “I look forward to those studies giving us the last word on vitamin D.”
Prof Louis Levy, head of nutrition science at Public Health England, maintained that people should continue to take supplements. “With a fifth of people in the UK showing concerning vitamin D levels, government advice is to achieve this from sunshine and a healthy balanced diet during summer and spring,” he said. “During autumn and winter, those not consuming foods naturally containing or fortified with vitamin D should consider a 10 microgram supplement.”
Martin Hewison, professor of molecular endocrinology at the University of Birmingham, agreed, adding that many trials for vitamin D supplementation have shown it is only effective if individuals are vitamin D-deficient to begin with – but that in this research very few participants started off with low levels of vitamin D.
“What the current study illustrates,” he said, “is that more studies are required that target vitamin D supplementation where it is needed – in people with vitamin D deficiency.”
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