Vitamin D: A-Ray of Health Benefits

BETHESDA, Md.—An in-depth review of current research on the health effects of vitamin D is being published as the proceedings of the late 2007 conference “Vitamin D and Health in the 21st Century: An Update,” convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The review will appear as an August 2008 supplement to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It is also available online.

“Given recent findings, it’s easy to see why people are so enthusiastic about the potential power of vitamin D, but we must recognize the limitations of any study and exercise caution when making broad public health recommendations,” said Mary Frances Picciano, Ph.D., a senior nutrition research scientist in the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), who co-authored an overview of the conference included in the journal supplement. “This is a very complex set of issues and there is still a lot we don’t know about how vitamin D levels affect health, especially across different age groups and ethnic populations.”

Among the additional limitations on the evidence linking vitamin D to various measures of human health are the lack of controls for confounding factors in studies, the lack of studies on just vitamin D independent of other nutrients, and a lack of standardized methods for testing vitamin D in blood.

To address consumer questions on vitamin D and human health, ODS developed a fact sheet on vitamin D, which is available online.

Source: National Institutes of Health: Key Gaps Remain in Understanding Health Effects of Vitamin D