Vitamin D is not known to reduce the chance of asthma attacks.
A new Cochrane review shows that taking vitamin D supplements does not reduce the risk of asthma attacks in children or adults.
This is in contrast to what a previous Cochrane review found that people who took vitamin D had fewer asthma attacks. I haven’t researched any health benefits either.
The Queen of London He was reviewed by researchers from the University of Mary and the University of Edinburgh. Adrian Martineau, Clinical Professor of Respiratory Infections and Immunity at Queen Mary University of London, said: However, as more studies have since been published and new information has been added to the review, the overall results have changed. Vitamin D supplements were found to have no effect on the risk of asthma attacks or the ability to control asthma symptoms compared to placebo.
Professor Martineau and his colleagues examined the results of 20 randomized controlled trials, the gold standard in medical research. These studies included information on 1,155 asthmatic children and his 1,070 asthmatic adults. This differs from a previous review that used data from his nine studies, which included a total of 1,093 people. Most people in the study had mild to moderate asthma.
There was no statistically significant difference in the number of asthma attacks requiring treatment with various corticosteroids when comparing patients taking vitamin D supplements with those taking a placebo. I did.
This review did not find an effect of vitamin D intake on asthma control, whether participants were vitamin D deficient at the beginning of the study, took different amounts of supplements, or were of different ages. I did.
“Unlike his previous Cochrane review on this subject, this updated review did not find vitamin D to protect against asthma attacks or facilitate control of asthma symptoms,” he said. Professor Martineau said. However, the studies we looked at did not find many people with severe asthma or very low levels of vitamin D in their blood. This means that these are still areas that need further research.
Dr Anne Williamson, also from Queen Mary University in London, said, “We don’t know why this latest review came to different conclusions than the 2016 study.” Alternatively, vitamin D deficiency in general may have become less common as more people take supplements and eat foods with added vitamin D.
“Each of these things can make it difficult to understand how taking vitamin D supplements can help. Also applies to This also demonstrates the importance of updating reviews when new research is published. ”
Today’s review has information from 20 clinical trials, while the 2016 review only had information from nine. Also, there are more children with asthma in this review than in the 2016 review. The review team also says that, compared to some other reviews, they had stricter rules about which studies would be included. For instance, they didn’t count studies that didn’t compare vitamin D to a placebo or that didn’t keep track of patients for at least 12 weeks.
Most of the studies in the review were done on people who took cholecalciferol, which is the most common form of vitamin D supplement. In a study that used calcidiol, which is a chemical that the body can make from vitamin D, patients with asthma were better able to control their symptoms. Reviewers say that more research is needed to find out if this type of vitamin D helps people with asthma.
The paper is in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews journal.
