Preventive cardiologyRelation of Vitamin D Deficiency to Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Disease Status, and Incident Events in a General Healthcare Population
Section snippets
Methods
We prospectively studied the electronic medical record database of the integrated Intermountain Healthcare system to address 4 objectives in a general healthcare population: (1) to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency in subjects with measured vitamin D levels; (2) to evaluate the relation of vitamin D levels to prevalence and incidence of prespecified CV risk factors; (3) to assess the relation of vitamin D levels to prespecified CV conditions; and (4) to
Results
In a search of the Intermountain electronic medical record database, 41,504 patients were found with at least one measured vitamin D level; 11,088 (26.7%) had 2 measurements, 3,950 (9.5%) had 3 measurements, and 1,703 (4.1%) had >3 measurements, for a total of 58,245 measured levels. The age and gender distribution is listed in Table 1.
The distribution of vitamin D levels by category is shown in Figure 1. Only minor differences among categories were noted by gender or age (Table 1). Although
Discussion
Vitamin D has increasingly been recognized to play a role in a broad range of bodily functions beyond bone health, including CV health.1, 2, 3 In parallel, the recognition of the presence of widespread vitamin D deficiency is increasing.1, 2, 3 The consequences of this growing epidemic of vitamin D deficiency are still not well understood. However, recent reports of the associations of vitamin D deficiency with multiple CV conditions have been of great interest, suggesting the need for
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Cited by (0)
This study was generously supported by the Del Loy Hansen Foundation, Logan, Utah and the Deseret Foundation, Salt Lake City, Utah.