Vitamin D status in irritable bowel syndrome and the impact of supplementation on symptoms: what do we know and what do we need to know?
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2018), doi:10.1038/s41430-017-0064-z
Claire E. Williams, Elizabeth A. Williams & Bernard M. Corfe
Note: The 7th study, which did not find a benefit, used too small a dose of Vitamin D (3,000 IU)
- Overview Gut and vitamin D
- Gut-Friendly Vitamin D
IBS needs "gut-friendly" vitamin D - which has been available for many years - Inflammatory diseases: review of vitamin D, with many tables – May 2014
- Vitamin D and Inflammatory Bowel Disease – review April 2015
- IBS quality of life improved by vitamin D (50,000 IU every two weeks) – RCT May 2016
- Gut is helped by Vitamin D – Sept 2017
- Intestinal absorption of vitamin D - a systematic review - Aug 2017
- IBD (Colitis, Crohn’s) was active 6X more often if low vitamin D – June 2015
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Vitamin D – review May 2015
- IBS – 82 percent had low vitamin D, 3,000 IU spray helped a lot – RCT Dec 2015
Note: Spray, cream, etc which by-passes the gut is far better for poor guts - Getting Vitamin D into your body has the following chart
Interesting - Note the positive spin of title of the news release by that organization
"Vitamin D could be new irritable bowel syndrome treatment"
Download the PDF from Sci-Hub.tw via VitaminDWiki
Background
Low vitamin D status is associated with risk of colorectal cancer and has been implicated in inflammatory bowel disease. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic, relapsing, functional bowel disorder. A nascent literature suggests a role for vitamin D in IBS, but this has not been collated or critiqued. To date, seven studies have been published: four observational studies and three randomised controlled trials (RCTs). All observational studies reported that a substantial proportion of the IBS population was vitamin D deficient. Two intervention studies reported improvement in IBS symptom severity scores and quality of life (QoL) with vitamin D supplementation.
There are limited data around the role of vitamin D in IBS.
Conclusions
The available evidence suggests that low vitamin D status is common among the IBS population and merits assessment and rectification for general health reasons alone. An inverse correlation between serum vitamin D and IBS symptom severity is suggested and vitamin D interventions may benefit symptoms. However, the available RCTs do not provide strong, generalizable evidence; larger and adequately powered interventions are needed to establish a case for therapeutic application of vitamin D in IBS.