VITAL study: How vitamin D and fish oil affect risk of heart attack, stroke and cancer
Finally, the highly anticipated result of the VITAL Study are in - at least for the major endpoints CVD and cancer.
While at first sight they may seem disappointing and have already prompted the usual, overgeneralizing negative reports from many media outlets, there are some remarkable findings if you look more closely - such as a whopping 77% reduced risk for heart attacks in African Americans taking fish oil (all those media who are now sweepingly reporting that fish oil dies “not reduce CVD”, without mentioning this, such as MdMag*, musk ask themselves whether they are looking at the results through racist glasses, as the investigators certainly didn’t make a secret of this remarkable finding).
With regard to vitamin D, the results certainly don’t support the strong effect on cancer risk suggested by some observational studies, but there seems to be a modest effect building up over time, and given the fact that 2000 IU is a rather modest dose indeed and not expected to raise the blood level by more than 10 ng/ml, the jury is far from out on vitamin D and cancer.
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Anyway, this is a very high quality trial providing the researchers with a treasure-trove of data that will be subject to many auxillary studies. I’m particularly curious about the upcoming studies regarding autoimmune and mental health endpoints.