Lupus and Vitamin D: good evidence, no conclusions – Review Jan 2013

The Clinical Significance of Vitamin D in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Systematic Review

PLOS 1
Rajalingham Sakthiswary sakthis5 at hotmail.com
Azman Ali Raymond

Background: Vitamin D deficiency is more prevalent among SLE patients than the general population. Over the past decade, many studies across the globe have been carried out to investigate the role of vitamin D in SLE from various clinical angles. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to summarise and evaluate the evidence from the published literature; focusing on the clinical significance of vitamin D in SLE.

Methods: The following databases were searched: MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Knowledge and CINAHL, using the terms “lupus”, “systemic lupus erythematosus”, “SLE and “vitamin D”. We included only adult human studies published in the English language between 2000 and 2012.The reference lists of included studies were thoroughly reviewed in search for other relevant studies.

Results: A total of 22 studies met the selection criteria. The majority of the studies were observational (95.5%) and cross sectional (90.9%). Out of the 15 studies which looked into the association between vitamin D and SLE disease activity, 10 studies (including the 3 largest studies in this series) revealed a statistically significant inverse relationship. For disease damage, on the other hand, 5 out of 6 studies failed to demonstrate any association with vitamin D levels. Cardiovascular risk factors such as insulin resistance, hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia were related to vitamin D deficiency, according to 3 of the studies.

Conclusion: There is convincing evidence to support the association between vitamin D levels and SLE disease activity. There is paucity of data in other clinical aspects to make firm conclusions.

Citation: Sakthiswary R, Raymond AA (2013) The Clinical Significance of Vitamin D in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Systematic Review. PLoS ONE 8(1): e55275. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055275

Editor: Paul Proost, University of Leuven, Rega Institute, Belgium

Received: October 11, 2012; Accepted: December 30, 2012; Published: January 30, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Sakthiswary, Raymond. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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See also VitaminDWiki

• All items in category Lupus 78 items
• Lupus flareups cut in half by just 2,000 IU of vitamin D – RCT Dec 2012
• Lupus flares totally eliminated by loading dose then 100000 IU of vitamin D each month – Oct 2012
• Vitamin D patent for treating immune system diseases

See also web

• Expert Review of Lupus May 2013, 10 pages, behind a $60 paywall