Vitamin D and Calcium: A Systematic Review of Health Outcomes (Update).

What It Covers

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in this systematic review publication.

The intent was to support a transparent literature review process and provide a foundation for subsequent reviews of the nutrients.

To systematically summarize the evidence on the relationship between vitamin D alone or in combination with calcium on selected health outcomes included in the earlier review: primarily those related to bone health, cardiovascular health, cancer, immune function, pregnancy, all-cause mortality, and vitamin D status; and to identify the vitamin D assay methods and procedures used for the interventional studies that aimed to assess the effect of vitamin D administration on serum 25(OH)D concentrations, and to stratify key outcomes by methods used to assay serum 25(OH)D concentrations.

Why It Was Studied

In 2009, the Institute of Medicine/Food and Nutrition Board constituted a Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) committee to undertake a review of the evidence that had emerged (since the 1997 DRI report) on the relationship of vitamin D and calcium, both individually and combined, to a wide range of health outcomes, and potential revision of the DRI values for these nutrients.

To support that review, several United States and Canadian Federal Government agencies commissioned a systematic review of the scientific literature for use during the deliberations by the committee.

What Was Measured

In 2009, the Institute of Medicine/Food and Nutrition Board constituted a Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) committee to undertake a review of the evidence that had emerged (since the 1997 DRI report) on the relationship of vitamin D and calcium, both individually and combined, to a wide range of health outcomes, and potential revision of the DRI values for these nutrients.

In 2013, in preparation for a project the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements (NIH/ODS) was undertaking related to evidence-based decisionmaking for vitamin D in primary care, based on the updated DRI report, the ODS and AHRQ requested an update to the 2009 systematic review to incorporate the findings of studies conducted since the 2009 evidence review on the relationship between vitamin D alone or vitamin D plus calcium to selected health outcomes and to report on the methods used to assay vitamin D in the included trials.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Calcium, Dietary, Vitamin D, Recommended Dietary Allowances and Health Status.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a systematic review of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

Results are reported in around 7 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2014 (Evidence report/technology assessment), a journal based in United States.

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