Vitamin D Deficiency and Its Relationship to Cardiovascular Disease

Download or read book Vitamin D Deficiency and Its Relationship to Cardiovascular Disease written by Vanessa Scialom and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problem: Vitamin D deficiency is more prevalent than one might think, with approximately one billion people worldwide having this deficiency. In addition, cardiovascular disease has recently been linked to vitamin D deficiency. It is not uncommon to encounter patients with both a deficiency and some sort of cardiovascular disease, such as hypertension. The purpose of this literature review is to discuss the causes of vitamin D deficiency, what populations are at risk and recent studies that have shown how it is linked to cardiovascular disease. Methods: A PubMed search using the online resources of the Weill Cornell Medical College Library was conducted for articles that focused on how vitamin D deficiencies are linked to cardiovascular disease, how supplementation affects blood pressure, and how African-Americans are at an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Only English language journal articles with full text versions online were selected for this literature review. Results: Studies analyzed for this review concluded that there does seem to be a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular disease. However, there were limited results in determining how supplementation, specifically in African-Americans, could affect their blood pressure. Conclusions: Because vitamin D deficiency is primarily due to inadequate intake, correcting the deficiency could offer the hope of decreasing the chances of developing a cardiovascular event. This is important because supplementing someone with a deficiency could help decrease this probability and prevent him or her from having to take life-long medications.