Study: Daily vitamin D, calcium reduces fractures

William Atkins
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 01:55

Science - Health

According to international research involving almost 70,000 people, the daily use of vitamin D and calcium was showed to reduce the risk from hip fractures, vertebral fractures—in fact, all types of bone fractures in all ages of men and women.


The article “Patient level pooled analysis of 68 500 patients from seven major vitamin D fracture trials in US and Europe” (doi:10.1136/bmj.b5463; BMJ 2010;340:b5463) was published on January 12, 2010, in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The scientists involved in the study were part of the DIPART (vitamin D Individual Patient Analysis of Randomized Trials) Group.

The group was headed by scientists from Copenhagen University in Denmark. The international team included B. Abrahamsen (Department of Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte), Niels Andersensvej (Hellerup, Denmark), and John Robbins of the University of California, Davis

The scientists wanted to find out if "vitamin D (by itself)" or "vitamin D plus calcium" would influence whether people had a reduced risk from fracturing of their bones.

They used 68,517 people who were participating in seven major randomized trials of vitamin D with calcium or vitamin D (by itself).

The clinical trials were conducted in 2006 at the University of California, Davis, as part of the Women's Health Initiative.

The people participating in the study ranged in age from 47 to 107 years, with a mean age of 69.9 years.

Men consisted of 14.7% of the participants with the women making up the other 85.3%.

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