Vitamin D status and its association with season, hospital and sepsis mortality in critical illness.

What Was Tested

This observational study looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The researchers aimed to evaluate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and the correlation between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH) D) and hospital mortality, sepsis mortality and blood culture positivity.

Why It Was Studied

Vitamin D plays a key role in immune function.

Deficiency may aggravate the incidence and outcome of infectious complications in critically ill patients.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

In a single-center retrospective observational study at a tertiary care center in Graz, Austria, 655 surgical and nonsurgical critically ill patients with available 25(OH) D levels hospitalized between September 2008 and May 2010 were included.

How the Study Was Run

Cox regression analysis adjusted for age, gender, severity of illness, renal function and inflammatory status was performed.

Vitamin D levels were categorized by month-specific tertiles (high, intermediate, low) to reflect seasonal variation of serum 25(OH) D levels.

What Was Measured

Deficiency may aggravate the incidence and outcome of infectious complications in critically ill patients.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biomarkers, Critical Illness, Hospital Mortality, Seasons, Sepsis, Vitamin D and Vitamin D Deficiency.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 9 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (Critical care (London, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.