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Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Mar 8;14(6):1144.
doi: 10.3390/nu14061144.

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

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

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

Herim Cho et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Background: Recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have reported inconsistent findings regarding the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in the treatment of acute respiratory infections (ARIs). This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in the treatment of ARIs using a meta-analysis of RCTs.

Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library were searched for relevant articles in June 2021. Two of the authors independently assessed the eligibility of the trials.

Results: Out of 390 articles retrieved from the databases, we included 18 RCTs, which involved 3648 participants, with 1838 in an intervention group and 1810 in a control group in the final analysis. In the meta-analysis of all the trials, vitamin D supplements had a beneficial effect in the treatment of ARIs (relative risk (RR) = 1.07; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.01-1.13; I2 = 66.9%). Publication bias was observed in the funnel plot. In the subgroup meta-analysis of high-quality RCTs, no significant efficacy of vitamin D supplements was found (RR = 1.02; 95% CI, 0.98-1.06; I2 = 24.0%). Although statistically significant changes of 7% in the treatment effects were observed, they are not considered as clinically substantial ones.

Conclusions: The current meta-analysis suggests that vitamin D supplements are not clinically effective in the treatment of ARIs.

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

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram for identification of relevant clinical trials.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Efficacy of vitamin D supplements in treatment of acute respiratory infections in a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (n = 18) [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]. RR, relative risk; CI, confidence interval.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Begg’s funnel plots and Egger’s test for identifying publication bias. RR, relative risk; S.E., standard error.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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