Vitamin D helps prevent multiple sclerosis

Use of vitamin D but not calcium supplementation appears effective at preventing multiple sclerosis (MS) in individuals of European descent, suggests a recent study.

A team of investigators conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study to explore the causal association of circulating total 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D), 25(OH)D3, C3-epi-25(OH)D3, and calcium with the risk of MS using large-scale genome-wide association studies datasets for total 25(OH)D (n=417,580), 25(OH)D3 (n=40,562), C3-epi-25(OH)D3 (n=40,562), calcium (n=305,349), and MS (14,802 MS and 26,703 controls).

Five MR methods, including inverse-variance weighted (IVW), simple median, weighted median, MR-Egger, MR-PRESSO (Mendelian Randomization Pleiotropy Residual Sum and Outlier), and contamination mixture method, were selected.

IVW revealed that the genetically increased circulating 25(OH)D level (odds ratio [OR], 0.81, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.70‒0.94; p=4.00E-03), circulating 25(OH)D level (OR, 0.85, 95 percent CI, 0.76‒0.95; p=5.00E-03), and circulating C3-epi-25(OH)D3 level (OR, 0.85, 95 percent CI, 0.74‒0.98; p=2.30E-02) causally correlated with a lower MS risk.

However, no causal association was observed between circulating calcium level and the risk of MS (OR, 2.85, 95 percent CI, 0.42‒19.53; p=2.85E-01.

“Our current findings together with evidence from other MR studies support the use of vitamin D but not calcium supplementation for the prevention of MS,” the investigators said.

“Vitamin D is an important regulator of calcium. MR studies exclusively focused on the circulating total 25(OH)D as a biomarker of vitamin D status and have found the causal association between 25(OH)D and the risk of MS,” they noted.