Vitamin D supplements `do not lower cholesterol in short term`

Washington - Researchers including one of Indian origin have suggested that Vitamin D, which has been touted for its beneficial effects on a range of human systems from enhancing bone health to reducing the risk of developing certain cancers, does not improve cholesterol levels.

In the new study, a team of scientists from The Rockefeller University Hospital has shown that, at least in the short term, cholesterol levels did not improve when volunteers with vitamin D deficiency received mega-doses of vitamin D.

The researchers, led by Manish Ponda studied 151 people with vitamin D deficiency.

The study participants were given either 50,000 internationals units of vitamin D3 or a placebo weekly for eight weeks. Participants’ cholesterol levels were measured before and after treatment.

Correcting vitamin D deficiencies with high doses of oral vitamin D supplements did not change cholesterol levels, Ponda and his colleagues found, despite effectively increasing vitamin D to recommended levels.

Vitamin D levels nearly tripled in the group that received supplements, but were unchanged in the placebo group.

“Our study challenges the notion that replenishing vitamin D improves cholesterol,” Ponda said.

“In fact, a biologic response to vitamin D was correlated with an increase in LDL cholesterol,” he said.

Ponda and his colleagues also tested the effect of vitamin D supplementation on lipoprotein particle size and number, biomarkers of cholesterol not typically measured in clinical practice, and found no change in response to increases in vitamin D.

These clinical trial results confirm those from a recent data mining study, published in July in the journal Circulation, conducted by the Breslow lab in collaboration with scientists at Quest Diagnostics.

In that study, the researchers had examined a de-identified dataset for 8,592 patients and showed that raising vitamin D levels from deficient to optimal levels had no statistically significant effect on LDL (bad) cholesterol, or triglycerides. Increasing vitamin D had a small, but clinically minimal impact on total and HDL (good) cholesterol.

“This study raises questions about the use of vitamin D supplements to improve cholesterol,” Ponda said.

“Longer-term studies on the impact of vitamin D supplementation are needed to make stronger recommendations,” he added.

The study has been published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.