Vitamin D for the treatment of chronic painful conditions in adults
One article on PainSci cites Straube 2015: Vitamin D for Pain
PainSci commentary on Straube 2015: ?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 wherever possible.
This is a review of 10 generally poor quality studies of vitamin D supplementation intended to treat a variety of painful problems. It concludes that “a large beneficial effect of vitamin D across different chronic painful conditions is unlikely,” but a general effect on a variety of conditions was never plausible to begin with. As for whether it helps specific painful conditions, that, of course, “needs further investigation.” This is the same conclusion reached by
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.
MAIN RESULTS: We included six new studies (517 participants) in this review update, bringing the total of included studies to 10 (811 participants). The studies were heterogeneous with regard to study quality, the chronic painful conditions that were investigated, the dose of vitamin D given, co-interventions, and the outcome measures reported. Only two studies reported responder pain outcomes; the other studies reported treatment group average outcomes only. Overall, there was no consistent pattern that vitamin D treatment was associated with greater efficacy than placebo in any chronic painful condition (low quality evidence). Adverse events and withdrawals were comparatively infrequent, with no consistent difference between vitamin D and placebo (good quality evidence).
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The evidence addressing the use of vitamin D for chronic pain now contains more than twice as many studies and participants than were included in the original version of this review. Based on this evidence, a large beneficial effect of vitamin D across different chronic painful conditions is unlikely. Whether vitamin D can have beneficial effects in specific chronic painful conditions needs further investigation.
related content
- “Effect of Vitamin D Supplementation on Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Wu et al, Pain Physician, 2016.
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:
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- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.
- Is there a relationship between throbbing pain and arterial pulsations? Mirza 2012 J Neurosci.