Episode 36: Vitamin D

Preventing cancer. Curing depression. Single-handedly ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh, and something to do with your bones. Is there anything Vitamin D can’t do?

Maybe the answer is: “quite a lot”. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the claims about the wondrous powers of Vitamin D supplements - and whether any of them have any decent evidence behind them. The whole story turns out to be a perfect parable for how to think about health research.

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Show notes

* Rupa Huq MP’s article from during the COVID pandemic on how the government should be “shouting about Vitamin D”

* Huq and David Davis MP convince the government to recommend Vitamin D

* Stuart’s New Statesman article on why this was jumping the gun a little

* How Vitamin D regulates calcium and phosphorus metabolism in the body

* Might it slow tumour growth? Or prevent cardiovascular disease? Evidence from rats

* Observational studies on how Vitamin D levels are related to: depression, cognitive impairment, cancer rates, cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality

* Review paper claiming widespread deficiency in Vitamin D

* Scientific American article including discussion of the confusion over what it means to be “deficient” in, and/or have an “insufficiency” of Vitamin D

* 2019 paper reporting results from the VITAL trial on cancer and cardiovascular risk

* D-health trial results on cancer risk and cardiovascular risk

* From the D-health trial, papers reporting no effect of Vitamin D supplementation on: cognitive impairment, depression, microbiome diversity, telomere length, hypothyroidism, erectile dysfunction, falls, fractures

* Classic xkcd cartoon on false-positive jelly beans

* 2022 Nature Reviews Endrocrinology review on the (lack of) evidence for the effects of Vitamin D beyond bone-related problems

* Story of UK man who died of a Vitamin D overdose

* Vitamin D and COVID: the promising observational study; the null trial

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

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