Vitamin D3 shows Promise in Reducing Recurrent Heart Attacks, New Study Suggests
Breaking News: A new study indicates targeted vitamin D3 supplementation may substantially reduce the risk of a second heart attack following a cardiac event, offering a potential new avenue for post-heart attack care. While the treatment didn’t demonstrate a broad impact on all major cardiac outcomes, researchers found a more than 50% reduction in follow-up heart attacks among participants receiving the targeted vitamin D3 therapy.
The research, detailed recently, followed patients after a major cardiac event – including heart attack, hospitalization for heart failure, and stroke. The study compared a group receiving targeted vitamin D3 treatment to a control group. Researchers observed a 3.8% rate of follow-up heart attacks in the vitamin D3 group, compared to 7.9% in the control group.
“while the results suggest that targeted vitamin D3 supplementation may not reduce all major cardiac outcomes, it did cut the risk of repeat heart attacks by more than half,” the study authors reported. They plan to launch a larger clinical trial to validate these findings.
experts in the field are cautiously optimistic. Cheng-Han Chen, MD, a board-certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, emphasized the existing research shows a correlation between higher vitamin D levels and lower heart disease rates, but not necessarily causation. Though, he acknowledged vitamin D3 may offer cardiovascular benefits like “decreasing inflammation and lowering blood pressure.” He stated that confirmation of the findings in larger studies would be “quite notable.”
Louis Malinow, MD, Director of Education and Clinical Excellence at MDVIP and Diplomate of the American Board of Clinical Lipidology, also not involved in the research, praised the study’s focus on achieving a specific vitamin D level. “So many vitamin D trials have failed to show any benefit as patients were broadly prescribed the same dose and levels were not checked,” he told Medical News Today.
Malinow suggested correcting a vitamin D deficiency could improve arterial health, potentially by “lower[ing] blood pressure and reduc[ing] inflammation, both of which have a role in heart disease.” He further speculated that longer-term vitamin D correction, initiated earlier in life, might yield even more considerable benefits, suggesting a future study focusing on primary prevention patients aiming for a vitamin D level closer to 60 nmol/L.