New Studies Suggest that Vitamin D May Be the Life-Extension Nutrient

If you'd like to live to a ripe old age, you might make sure you’re getting at least 1,000 IU of vitamin D daily. Three new studies have found that people with high blood levels of vitamin D are less likely to die from any cause, including heart disease and cancer.

Harald Dobnig, MD, of the Medical University of Graz, Austria, and colleagues measured vitamin D levels in 3,258 men and women, with an average age of 62 years, who had been scheduled for a coronary angiography, a heart diagnostic procedure. Over an average follow up of about seven and a half years, just over one-fifth of the subjects died.

Dobnig calculated that people with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D were about two and a half times more likely to die from some type of cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, people with the lowest vitamin D levels were twice as likely to die from any cause, compared with those who had the highest vitamin D levels. Low vitamin D levels were also associated with higher C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 levels, both signs of inflammation.

In the second study, Michal L. Melamed, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and his colleagues studied vitamin D levels and the risk of death in 13,331 American adults. The people in the study represented a cross-section of Americans and were participating in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Once again, people with the lowest vitamin D levels were more likely to die during an average of almost nine years of follow up. In this study, men and women with the lowest levels of vitamin D—less than 17.8 ng/ mL of blood—were 26 percent more likely to die from any cause.

In the third study, Stefan Pilz, MD, of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, studied almost 3,300 patients, most of whom were in their sixties. He found that, after almost eight years, people with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D had a one-third greater risk of dying from cancer. A previous study conducted by researchers at Harvard University, noted Pilz, reported that people with high blood levels of vitamin D were 17 percent less likely to develop cancer and 29 percent less likely to die from cancer. They also had a 45 percent reduction in digestive tract cancers.

References: Dobnig H, Pilz S, Scharnagl H, et al. “Independent association of low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D levels with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.” Archives of Internal Medicine, 2008;168:1340-1349. Melamed ML, Michos ED, Post W. “25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and the risk of mortality in the general population.” Archives of Internal Medicine, 2008;168:1629-1637. Pilz S, Dobnig H, Winklhofer-Roob B, et al. “Low serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D predict fatal cancer in patients referred to coronary angiography.” Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, 2008;17:1228-1233.