Vitamin D for the treatment of chronic painful conditions in adults.

What It Covers

This systematic review looks at Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in the context of chronic pain: fibromyalgia & crps.

This review is an update of a previously published review in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Issue 1, 2010) on 'Vitamin D for the treatment of chronic painful conditions in adults'.Vitamin D is produced in the skin after exposure to sunlight and can be obtained through food.

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a range of conditions, including chronic pain.

Who the Included Studies Covered

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults.

This was supplemented by searching the reference lists of retrieved articles, reviews in the field, and online trial registries.

The researchers included studies if they were randomised double-blind trials of vitamin D supplementation compared with placebo or with active comparators for the treatment of chronic painful conditions in adults.

How the Review Was Done

For this update, the researchers searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, and EMBASE to February 2015.

What Was Measured

Two review authors independently selected the studies for inclusion, assessed methodological quality, and extracted data.

Primary outcomes of interest were pain responder outcomes, and secondary outcomes were treatment group average pain outcomes and adverse events.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Arthritis, Rheumatoid, Chronic Pain, Ergocalciferols, Hydroxycholecalciferols, Musculoskeletal Pain, Osteoarthritis, Knee and Polymyalgia Rheumatica.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a systematic review of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in people with chronic pain: fibromyalgia & crps.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2015 (The Cochrane database of systematic reviews), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, Chronic pain: fibromyalgia & CRPS research.