Adequate Vitamin D Levels May Lower Mortality Risk In Diabetic Patients, Study Finds

In a recent study published by the American Diabetes Association in the journal Diabetes Care, researchers established a link suggesting that adequate blood concentrations of vitamin D could significantly reduce both cardiovascular death risk and all-cause mortality in patients with type I and type II diabetes.
 
Sourcing the data from 6,320 adults who participated in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the researchers observed a clinically significant reduction in the group of participants who had serum vitamin D concentrations that were above deficient levels (<50nmol/L). In total, 46.6% of the study participants were deficient in vitamin D.
 
During the study, which had a variable follow-up period totaling 55,126 person-years across 2001-2014, a total of 2,056 deaths were recorded, including 605 CVD deaths and 309 cancer deaths. Higher serum vitamin D levels were linearly associated with lower all-cause and CVD mortality, with a 31% reduced risk for all-cause mortality and a 38% lower risk of CVD mortality per one increment used to measure vitamin D status.
 
Those patients who did have adequate vitamin D status also had lower levels of glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR, HbA1c, blood lipids, and C-reactive protein at baseline, all of which are positive signs in the management of diabetes.
 
The researchers suggest that maintaining adequate levels of vitamin D may help people with diabetes lower their risk of death, though the evidence preceding this clinical trial on the matter remains scarce.