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Comment & Response
November 2017

Vitamin D Supplementation and Cardiovascular Disease Risk

Author Affiliations
  • 1Clinic for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart and Diabetes Center North Rhine-Westphalia, Ruhr University Bochum, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany
  • 2Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
JAMA Cardiol. 2017;2(11):1280-1281. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2017.2935

To the Editor We read with interest the study by Scragg et al1 demonstrating that in elderly individuals with mean baseline circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels of 25.5 ng/mL, a monthly vitamin D bolus of 100 000 IU for 3.34 years, resulting in in-study 25(OH)D levels of 54.1 ng/mL, had no significant effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes. The authors are to be congratulated for their large study cohort and the long study duration. They have already discussed the possibility that the intermittent high-dose bolus administration may have contributed to the null effect. A second issue is the relatively high initial 25(OH)D level; could a beneficial vitamin D effect really be expected, given that various official nutrition societies consider circulating 25(OH)D levels of 20 ng/mL as adequate?

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