Vitamin D Won’t Help Most COPD Patients: Study
TUESDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) — Vitamin D supplements don’t seem to support most patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a new study by Belgian investigators.
Emphysema and chronic bronchitis are the two major forms of COPD, and a lot of sufferers have each. The condition makes it hard for men and women to breathe.
Because most COPD patients are vitamin D deficient and vitamin D aids fight inflammation, the hope was that high doses of the sunshine vitamin would reduce the quantity of severe flare-ups (“exacerbations”) that can land patients in the hospital, researchers mentioned.
“There are studies showing that patients with vitamin D deficiency are more susceptible to various inflammatory, infectious and autoimmune illnesses, and most likely COPD,” stated lead investigator Dr. Wim Janssens, from the respiratory division at University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven.
Nonetheless, this study identified only a restricted benefit from vitamin D supplementation, he said.
“Vitamin D restoration to typical levels in COPD patients does not minimize the number of exacerbations, does not decrease the infections and inflammation,” Janssens said.
Nonetheless, it had an impact on patients with the lowest vitamin D levels, he mentioned. “These patients had benefit from supplementation in terms of exacerbations,” he stated.
“But this does not permit us to conclude that we need to have to give all COPD patients these high doses of vitamin D it just strengthens us in the concept that severe deficiency a lot of improve inflammation in COPD,” Janssens stated.
“New research are essential to confirm what we identified,” he added.
The report was published in the Jan. 17 problem of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
For the study, Janssens’ team randomly assigned 182 patients with moderate to very serious COPD to 100,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D supplements or placebos every single month for 1 year.
Over that time, researchers looked for the rate of flare-ups and hospitalizations as well as top quality of life and deaths.
Although blood levels of vitamin D rose considerably in those taking the supplement, there was no considerable difference in the time to a initial exacerbation or the quantity of flare-ups between these patients and those receiving placebos, the researchers identified.
There also was no substantial difference between the groups in hospitalizations, good quality of life and deaths, the authors added.
Even so, 30 patients with severe vitamin D deficiencies who were taking the supplement did have a important reduction in exacerbations, the researchers located.
Dr. Diane Gold, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a professor of environmental wellness at the Harvard School of Public Wellness, is the co-author of an accompanying journal editorial. She stated that “COPD ranks in the top rated ten causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States.”
However, COPD therapies other than stopping smoking have limited effect in lowering COPD-associated deaths, she mentioned.
This study “does not definitively refute the benefit of vitamin D supplements for minimizing COPD exacerbations,” Gold said.
“Variability in the underlying disease and genetics are most likely to modify the respiratory responses to vitamin D supplementation in individuals with COPD,” she added.
Larger trials with longer follow-up and everyday vitamin D dosing are required to recognize the variability in respiratory responses to vitamin D supplementation, Gold mentioned. “And also to assess rarer COPD outcomes such as hospitalization or deaths, or outcomes with longer latency such as alterations in lung function, fractures, cardiac outcomes or lung cancer.”
Yet another professional, Dr. Michael Holick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine, mentioned he is not shocked some patients benefited from vitamin D.
“There is evidence that vitamin D deficiency exacerbates asthma and lung function,” he said.
“We know vitamin D has an impact on minimizing inflammatory activity and fighting infections, all of which are chronic difficulties in patients with COPD,” Holick said.
A lot more info
For a lot more data on COPD, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
