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Getting enough vitamin D isn’t just good for your bones and muscles. For people who have had a heart attack, vitamin D3 supplements could cut the risk of a second one in half, a small new study suggests.
The findings indicate that targeted treatment to raise patients’ vitamin D levels could be a simple way to lower their risks – though more research is needed to confirm the link.
The study included more than 600 people who had recently had a heart attack. They were either given standard treatment or vitamin D3 supplements to raise levels of the vitamin in their blood to more than 40 nanograms per millilitre (ng/mL).
The body creates vitamin D naturally from direct sunlight on the skin, but an estimated 13 per cent of people in Europe are severely deficient.
In the study, more than half of patients who got vitamin D3 supplements needed an initial dose of 5,000 international units (IU) – six to eight times more than the common guidance of 600 to 800 IU – to reach that level.
Researchers checked their vitamin D levels every year to ensure they stayed above 40 ng/mL.
When it came to heart failure, stroke, and death, there was no real difference between people who underwent standard care and those who got vitamin D3 supplements.
However, the supplement group was about half as likely to have a second heart attack.
“With more targeted treatment, when we checked exactly how supplementation was working and made adjustments, we found that patients had their risk of another heart attack cut in half,” Heidi May, one of the study’s authors and a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the US-based hospital system Intermountain Health, said in a statement.
There were also no negative side effects from vitamin D3 supplementation, the study found – though as a general rule, health experts say adults should not take more than 4,000 IU of vitamin D per day as it could lead to kidney stones or high calcium levels in the blood.
The findings, which have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, were presented at a meeting hosted by the American Heart Association in the United States.
Other randomised studies have found no heart health benefits from vitamin D supplements. However, the researchers said that in those studies, patients were prescribed a blanket dose of vitamin D, regardless of their baseline levels.
They believe their targeted approach – where they consistently checked and adjusted vitamin D levels – is what made the difference for patients in their study.
Even so, they said additional work will be needed to confirm their findings.
“We’re excited with these results but know we have further work to do to validate these findings,” May said.