Vitamin D levels may have an important impact on the risk of vascular complications from diabetes.
People with this metabolic disorder are more likely to have heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular disasters. They also develop kidney problems and retinal damage from microvascular damage.
Learning How Vitamin D Affects Diabetes
Researchers used data from a large diabetes trial conducted in Austrialia, New Zealand and Finland to examine the effect of vitamin D levels in people with diabetes. There were more than 9,000 volunteers in the study randomized to fenofibrate or placebo.
Blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D were measured at the beginning of the study. About half of the subjects had low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D.
Over the 5 years of the study, these people were 23 percent more likely to have cardiovascular complications than those whose blood levels of vitamin D were higher.
The study was not capable of determining if this association is causative, however, and no one knows if supplemental vitamin D will prevent problems. For now, it makes sense to get at least a quarter hour of sun exposure several days a week to boost vitamin D blood levels naturally.
