Vitamin D halves risk of fatal lung attacks and brings relief to acute respiratory patients
Giving supplements to vitamin D-deficient chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients nearly halves their rate of potentially fatal attacks, providing a safe, cost-effective boost for patients with such respiratory disorders.
Queen Mary researchers have found that Vitamin D supplements can prevent deadly lung attacks in patients with COPD.
This research builds on their discovery of the vitamin’s effects on a range of respiratory disorders, such as asthma – and brings hope to sufferers of these debilitating conditions.
The team’s findings add to a growing list of health benefits for the ‘sunshine vitamin’. While vitamin D is best known for its effects on bone health, previous studies by Queen Mary researchers have revealed its role in protecting against colds, flu and asthma attacks, and even helping with weight gain and brain development in malnourished children.
A highly cost-effective treatment
Lead researcher Professor Adrian Martineau from Queen Mary said: “New treatments are urgently needed to prevent COPD attacks. Our study shows that giving supplements to vitamin D-deficient COPD patients nearly halves their rate of potentially fatal attacks.
“Vitamin D supplementation is safe, and it costs just a few pence to supplement a person for a year – so this is a potentially highly cost-effective treatment that could be targeted at those who have low vitamin D levels following routine testing.
“Around a fifth of COPD patients in the UK - about 240,000 people - have low levels of vitamin D. Reducing risk of attacks in such a large group would have major benefits for patients and for the NHS, since many attacks require costly hospital admission.”
A protective effect
The study, published in the journal Thorax in 2019, was based on an analysis of data from 469 patients across three clinical trials in the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Clinical trials investigating effects of vitamin D supplementation on COPD have shown conflicting results. By pooling all the individual patient data from different clinical trials, the team set out to determine whether vitamin D might have a protective effect on certain groups of COPD patients.
The analysis found that vitamin D supplements, given by mouth, reduced the rate of moderate/severe COPD exacerbations in patients with low vitamin D levels.
“Vitamin D is safe to take and relatively inexpensive so supplementation represents a potentially cost-effective strategy to reduce this problem.— Professor Adrian Martineau, Clinical Professor of Respiratory Infection and Immunity
A targeted therapy?
Giving supplements to patients who did not have such low levels of vitamin D didn’t reduce their risk of COPD attacks. The researchers therefore highlighted that this would need to be a targeted therapy, with doctors first testing vitamin D levels in COPD patients who experience frequent attacks, and then giving vitamin D supplements to those who are deficient.
This echoes the Queen Mary team’s previous studies that found that vitamin D had the strongest protective effects against asthma exacerbation and acute respiratory infections such as colds and flu in people who had the lowest vitamin D levels to start with.
Public Health England and the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition advise a daily intake of 10 micrograms of vitamin D.
The study is limited in that the data came from a relatively small number of trials, so the authors warn that the findings should be interpreted with a degree of caution.
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