14 DAY TRIAL // In a new study conducted on postmenopausal women, researchers could find no positive health effects for using vitamin D. Previous studies suggested that consuming the chemical promotes bone health, and reduces females' risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and cancer, among other conditions.
Last year the Brown University Institute of Medicine released a set of directives, calling on scientists to conduct a new large-scale study on the existence of this link. The research was carried out by scientists with the university's Warren Alpert Medical School.
After controlling for health risk factors such as abdominal obesity, the group determined that vitamin D provided postmenopausal with no quantifiable health benefit against severe conditions and death risks.
What the work managed to prove was that thin-waisted women with low vitamin D concentrations tended to be at a slightly-increased risk of suffering from adverse health conditions. Other studies hinted that this was the case some time ago.
“What we have is clinical trial evidence that for the most part vitamin D doesn’t seem to be helpful for conditions where people thought it might,” WAMS professor of family medicine and epidemiology Charles Eaton explains. The expert was the lead author of the new study.
“The best we can tell is that there isn’t an association. Once we took into account these other factors, high levels didn’t provide a benefit and low levels didn’t put you at risk,” he adds. Eaton is also a physician at the Memorial Hospital, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Details of the new investigation appear in the October 26 online issue of the esteemed American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study was carried out on 2,429 women, aged between 50 and 79.
All test participants were part of the Women’s Health Initiative study. The data the researchers had access to allowed them to track subjects' vitamin D concentrations over a period of 10 years. Of the test group, 79 women died of cardiovascular diseases and 62 on account of cancer.
The researchers are keen to point out that the new study is not meant to suggest that postmenopausal women should not consume vitamin D. The compound is indeed extremely effective at maintaining bone health, which has been its primary use all along.
However, women should know that taking higher doses of the chemical will not protect them against cancer and cardiovascular diseases, the team concludes.