An estimate of the global reduction in mortality rates through doubling vitamin D levels.
Eur J Clin Nutr. 2011 Jul 6. doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2011.68.
Grant WB. Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Background/Objectives:The goal of this work is to estimate the reduction in mortality rates for six geopolitical regions of the world under the assumption that serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels increase from 54 to 110?nmol/l.
Subjects/Methods:This study is based on interpretation of the journal literature relating to the effects of solar ultraviolet-B (UVB) and vitamin D in reducing the risk of disease and estimates of the serum 25(OH)D level-disease risk relations for cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and respiratory infections.
The vitamin D-sensitive diseases that account for more than half of global mortality rates are
- CVD,
- cancer,
- respiratory infections,
- respiratory diseases,
- tuberculosis and
- diabetes mellitus.
Additional vitamin D-sensitive diseases and conditions that account for 2 to 3% of global mortality rates are
- Alzheimer's disease,
- falls,
- meningitis,
- Parkinson's disease,
- maternal sepsis,
- maternal hypertension (pre-eclampsia) and
- multiple sclerosis.
Increasing serum 25(OH)D levels from 54 to 110?nmol/l would reduce the vitamin D-sensitive disease mortality rate by an estimated 20%.
Results:The reduction in all-cause mortality rates range from
- 7.6% for African females to
- 17.3% for European females.
Reductions for males average 0.6% lower than for females.
The estimated increase in life expectancy is 2 years for all six regions.
Conclusions:Increasing serum 25(OH)D levels is the most cost-effective way to reduce global mortality rates, as the cost of vitamin D is very low and there are few adverse effects from oral intake and/or frequent moderate UVB irradiance with sufficient body surface area exposed.
Just one of the tables in the paper
Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki
See also VitaminDWiki
- Dr. Grant on vitamin D and mortality in VitaminDWiki
- All items in Mortality and Vitamin D
295 items - All items Strength of Evidence for D
50 items
There have been
visits to this pagePlugin execution pending approval
This plugin was recently added or modified. Until an editor of the site validates the parameters, execution will not be possible.
Printer Friendly Follow this page for updates427 visitors, last modified 09 Dec, 2022, - All items Strength of Evidence for D