New research shows links for lack of vitamin D and cardiovascular disease

The association between concentrations of vitamin D and cardiovascular disease development had an L-shape. In other words…

We all know about the importance of vitamin D for healthy bones. As we get older, our bodies no longer break down older bone mass and replace it with new, stronger bone tissue. Older bone tissue is more fragile than newer bone mass, which can break more readily as a result of falls, particularly for women. Unfortunately, more than 40% of all Americans are not taking in adequate amounts of vitamin D,¹bringing about the risk of a lack of vitamin D and cardiovascular disease.

Vitamin D and cardiovascular disease

Although low bone mass is the most common risk from not getting enough vitamin D, there can be other, non-musculoskeletal related health issues, including an increased risk for developing cancer, multiple sclerosis or diabetes, as well as for cardiovascular disease or hypertension.²

One recent study reported that severely low serum vitamin D levels could almost double the chances for developing disease for the sickest patients, most commonly the elderly. Furthermore, the paper’s authors used a somewhat different method to achieve their results, which avoided the potential ethical dilemma of using test subjects with severe vitamin D deficiencies as the control group.

Research results

A paper published late last year in the European Heart Journal reported on findings from an observational study that examined the association between low serum vitamin D and cardiovascular disease development. For the study, the researchers examined 44,519 health records for patients with cardiovascular disease and for 251,269 control subjects.³

The analysis revealed that the association between concentrations of vitamin D and cardiovascular disease development had an L-shape. In other words, the risk for cardiovascular disease initially decreased sharply as vitamin D levels increased. Correction of the lowest levels of vitamin D could result in a risk reduction of as much as 4.4%. However, this association leveled off when vitamin D concentrations reached 50 nmol/L.

Furthermore, those subjects with the lowest levels of vitamin D had nearly twice the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, when compared to the healthy control group. Interestingly, a similar L-shaped pattern was revealed for both the systolic and diastolic numbers when the researchers examined the risk for hypertension.³

Threshold effect

This paper is also important because the researchers used a different type of analysis to take into account the threshold effect, in which there is a certain point at which vitamin D levels are low enough to constitute a disease risk, so the benefits of supplementation become more evident.⁴ Unfortunately, the practical drawback to designing randomized, controlled studies to test this effect would be using a control group of subjects with very low vitamin D levels, who would remain untreated for the duration of the study. This would obviously constitute a serious breach of medical ethics.

In order to get around this problem, the authors used a nonlinear analysis that allowed them to predict the effect of very low vitamin D levels based on another health risk, rather than just on the deficiency of vitamin D in a healthy subject.^3,4

Obviously, the main take-away from this study is the inverse relationship between vitamin D intake and the risks associated with disease and hypertension. However, the unique method of analysis also provides valuable data on how chiropractors can treat patients with severe vitamin D deficiencies, who are at greatest risk of developing other serious health complications.

References