Vitamin D deficiency: what a pain it is
PainSci summary of Holick 2003?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided at the bottom of the page, as often as possible. ★★☆☆☆?2-star ratings are for studies with flaws, bias, and/or conflict of interest; published in lesser journals. Ratings are a highly subjective opinion, and subject to revision at any time. If you think this paper has been incorrectly rated, please let me know.
In this editorial for Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Holick explains that “Vitamin D deficiency causes muscle weakness and muscle aches and pains in both children and adults.” In reference to Plotnikoff et al, who studied the relationship between D and pain directly and produced quite dramatic data, “The association between nonspecific musculoskeletal pain and vitamin D deficiency was suspected because of a higher prevalence of these symptoms during winter than summer. The study patients ranged in age from 10 to 65 years, and all had symptoms of vitamin D deficiency. Of the more than 90% of patients who were medically evaluated for persistent musculoskeletal pain 1 year or more before screening, none had been tested previously for vitamin D deficiency.”
original abstract†Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
In the current issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Plotnikoff and Quigley report that 100% of African Americans, East Africans, Hispanics, and American Indians in their Minnesota-based study had deficient levels of vitamin D; overall, 93% of the 150 children and adults in the study, which included broad categories of ethnic groups, were vitamin D–deficient. Is this unexpected? No. Is this newsworthy? Yes.
related content
- “Prevalence of severe hypovitaminosis D in patients with persistent, nonspecific musculoskeletal pain,” Gregory A Plotnikoff and Joanna M Quigley, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2003.
These two articles on PainScience.com cite Holick 2003 as a source:
- Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome — A guide to the unfinished science of muscle pain, with reviews of every theory and self-treatment and therapy option
- Vitamin D for Pain — Is it safe and reasonable for chronic pain patients to take higher doses of Vitamin D? And just how high is safe?
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Effectiveness of customised foot orthoses for Achilles tendinopathy: a randomised controlled trial. Munteanu 2015 Br J Sports Med.
- A Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis of the power pose effect with informed and default priors: the case of felt power. Gronau 2017 Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.
- The neck and headaches. Bogduk 2014 Neurol Clin.
- Agreement of self-reported items and clinically assessed nerve root involvement (or sciatica) in a primary care setting. Konstantinou 2012 Eur Spine J.
- Effect of NSAIDs on Recovery From Acute Skeletal Muscle Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Morelli 2017 Am J Sports Med.