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Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Feb 15;14(4):818.
doi: 10.3390/nu14040818.

Efficacy of Vitamin D Supplements in Prevention of Acute Respiratory Infection: A Meta-Analysis for Randomized Controlled Trials

Hae-Eun Cho  1 , Seung-Kwon Myung  2   3   4 , Herim Cho  1
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Efficacy of Vitamin D Supplements in Prevention of Acute Respiratory Infection: A Meta-Analysis for Randomized Controlled Trials

Hae-Eun Cho et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Background: Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have reported inconsistent results regarding the efficacy of vitamin D supplements in the prevention of acute respiratory infections (ARIs).

Methods: We investigated these efficacy results by using a meta-analysis of RCTs. We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library in June 2021.

Results: Out of 390 trials searched from the database, a total of 30 RCTs involving 30,263 participants were included in the final analysis. In the meta-analysis of all the trials, vitamin D supplementation showed no significant effect in the prevention of ARIs (relative risk (RR) 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.91-1.01, I2 = 59.0%, n = 30). In the subgroup meta-analysis, vitamin D supplementation was effective in daily supplementation (RR 0.83, 95% CI, 0.73-0.95, I2 = 69.1%, n = 15) and short-term supplementation (RR 0.83, 95% CI, 0.71-0.97, I2 = 66.8%, n = 13). However, such beneficial effects disappeared in the subgroup meta-analysis of high-quality studies (RR 0.89, 95% CI, 0.78-1.02, I2 = 67.0%, n = 10 assessed by the Jadad scale; RR 0.87, 95% CI, 0.66-1.15, I2 = 51.0%, n = 4 assessed by the Cochrane's risk of bias tool). Additionally, publication bias was observed.

Conclusions: The current meta-analysis found that vitamin D supplementation has no clinical effect in the prevention of ARIs.

Keywords: acute respiratory infections; meta-analysis; randomized controlled trial; vitamin D supplements.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow Diagram for selection of relevant clinical trials.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Efficacy of vitamin D supplements in prevention of acute respiratory infections in a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (n = 30) [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42]. RR, relative risk; CI, confidence interval; A, trial of vitamin D supplementation for prevention of Influenza (ViDiFlu); B, vitamin D3 supplementation in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (ViDiCO); C, vitamin D3 supplementation in adults with asthma (ViDiAs).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Efficacy of daily supplementation of vitamin D in prevention of acute respiratory infections and its efficacy in subgroup meta-analysis by quality of the study assessed by the Jadad scale [13,14,15,16,18,20,21,22,23,24,27,28,32,35,36]. RR, relative risk; CI, confidence interval.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Efficacy of daily supplementation of vitamin D in prevention of acute respiratory infections in subgroup meta-analysis by quality of the study assessed by Cochrane’s risk of bias tool [13,14,15,16,18,20,21,22,23,24,27,28,32,35,36]. RR, relative risk; CI, confidence interval.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Begg’s funnel plot and Egger’s test for identifying publication bias of randomized controlled trials. RR, relative risk; S.E, standard error.
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