Calcium and Vitamin D Do Not Increase Cardiac Events/Death Save

An analysis of the UK Biobank study found no link between calcium/vitamin D supplementation and incident cardiovascular events/deaths in a large prospective study of 475,255 men and women aged 40 to 69 years.

Results published in Journal of Bone and Mineral Research used registry data to identify coded incident hospital admissions for ischemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial infarction (MI), and subsequent death.

Amond 475,255 participants 33,437 were taking calcium supplements; 19,089 vitamin D; and 10,007 both.

In crude and adjusted analyses, there were no associations between use of calcium supplements and risk of incident hospital admission with either IHD, or subsequent death.

The hazard ratio (HR) for myocardial infarction was 0.97 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.79–1.20, p = 0.79) in  women taking calcium supplementation, and in men was 1.16 (95% CI 0.92–1.46, p = 0.22).

Results were similar for vitamin D and combination supplementation.

In this very large prospective cohort, there was no evidence that use of calcium/vitamin D supplementation was associated with increased risk of CV events.