Tuberculosis recovery speeded up by single 450,000 IU dose of vitamin D – RCT

Created January 2017

The effect of vitamin D on clinical outcomes in tuberculosis

Egyptian Journal of Chest Diseases and Tuberculosis. online 30 Jan 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejcdt.2017.01.004

Aliasghar Farazia, , , , Farshideh Didgarb, Aghmorad Sarafrazc

If the dose size had varied with weight, skin color, Vitamin D levels, etc, we doubtlessly would have seen even more benefit * Overview Tuberculosis and Vitamin D * Tuberculosis 4.5X more likely if vitamin D less than 10 nanogram – meta-analysis May 2015 * TB conversion 10X less likely if have sufficient vitamin D – Dec 2011 Items in both categories TB and Intervention are listed here: {category} See also web * Blacks born in Africa and moved to US had 27X higher rate of TB than people born in the US 2000-2009 * Note: Many studies have found that first generation dark skinned peoples moving far from equator are very vitamin D deficient and are far more likely to get diseases associated with low vitamin D. TB is just one example

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Introduction

Vitamin D enhances immune responses to tubercle bacillus. The aim of our study is to determine the improvements of clinical outcome in patients taking cholecalciferol as supplement accompany anti-tuberculosis treatment.

Materials and methods

In a placebo-controlled and double blinded clinical trial sixty patients with pulmonary tuberculosis from March 2014 to July 2015 in Markazi province of Iran were randomized to take either single dose of 450,000 International Units of cholecalciferol or placebo. Evaluation was carried out at one, two and three months later. The first outcome was reduction in TB score and the secondary outcome was smear conversion and improvement of quality of life.

Results

Mean calcidiol levels for the whole study population were 22.81 ± 10.76 ng/ml and there have been no associations between baseline calcidiol levels and sputum smear burden (P-value = 0.54). There was an association of TB severity score with lower levels of Vitamin D (P-value = 0.043). The Short Form (SF)-12 health survey scoring at enrolment in two arms did not differ significantly (P-value = 0.786). Two months’ later findings indicate that Vitamin D treatment had a positive effect on progressing health-related quality of life (P-value = 0.019) in each subscale of physical health score (P-value = 0.028) and mental health score (P-value = 0.025).

Conclusions

Our findings indicated that single dose cholecalciferol supplementation can lead to improving clinical outcome in tuberculous patients especially in those with calcidiol deficiency and improve the health-related quality of life of TB patients.

Tags: Intervention Tuberculosis