Acute Respiratory Infections Decreased With High-Dose Vitamin D

HealthDay News — For long-term care facility residents, high-dose vitamin D₃ supplementation is associated with reduced incidence of acute respiratory infection but increased incidence of falls, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Adit A. Ginde, MD, MPH, from the University of Colorado in Aurora, and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial among 107 long-term care residents aged 60 years and older. Participants were randomly assigned to either a high-dose group that received monthly supplement of 100,000 IU vitamin D₃ (55 participants) or a standard-dose group that received a monthly placebo or monthly supplement of 12,000 IU vitamin D₃ for those taking 400 to 1000 IU or less than 400 IU/day, respectively, as part of usual care (52 participants).

The researchers found that the high-dose and standard-dose groups had 0.67 and 1.11 acute respiratory infections per person-year (incidence rate ratio [IRR]: 0.60; P =.02). The high-dose group had more falls (1.47 vs 0.63 per person-year; IRR: 2.33; P <.001). Fractures were uncommon in both groups (0.10 vs 0.19 per person-year in the high-dose and standard-dose groups, respectively; P =.31). Neither group experienced hypercalcemia or kidney stones.

“Monthly high-dose vitamin D₃ supplementation reduced the incidence of [acute respiratory infections] in older long-term care residents but was associated with a higher rate of falls without an increase in fractures,” the researchers wrote.

Reference

1. Ginde AA, Blatchford P, Breese K, et al. High-dose monthly vitamin D for prevention of acute respiratory infection in older long-term care residents: a randomized clinical trial. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2016 Nov 16. doi:10.1111/jgs.14679.