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. 2025 Aug;81(3):729-739.
doi: 10.1007/s13105-025-01096-5. Epub 2025 May 26.

The importance of vitamin D levels in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Evgenia Koureta  1 , Pantelis Karatzas  1 , Panagiotis Kanellopoulos  2 , Angeliki Papapanagiotou  2 , Vasileios Lekakis  1 , Giorgos Bamias  3 , Andreas Koutsoumpas  1 , George Karamanolis  1 , Jiannis Vlachogiannakos  1 , Athanasios G Papavassiliou  2 , George V Papatheodoridis  4
Affiliations

The importance of vitamin D levels in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Evgenia Koureta et al. J Physiol Biochem. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

The possible role of vitamin D (VD) in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and the associations between VD levels and IBD activity remain unclarified. We aimed to assess VD levels in IBD patients and their associations with IBD activity. We evaluated VD levels in Greek patients aged 18-75 years old with Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC). Patients were ineligible under the following conditions: history of enterectomy/right colectomy, receiving VD or agent(s) interfering with VD metabolism during the last three months and any comorbidities that influence VD levels. Epidemiologic characteristics, clinical course, laboratory investigations, endoscopic and histologic findings were recorded. In total, 122 patients with CD and 71 with UC were included. Most of them had low levels of VD (90% of CD and 91.5% of UC patients). Patients with clinically active CD or UC had lower levels of VD compared to those in remission (p = 0.009 and p = 0.033, respectively).CD patients with low levels of VD had higher CRP and stool calprotectin compared to those with normal levels of VD (P = 0.032 and P = 0.002, respectively). In UC, patients with pancolitis had lower VD levels compared to patients with proctitis (P = 0.036). In conclusion, the majority of Greek IBD patients have low levels of VD. Clinical activity is related to lower levels of VD. Low compared to normal levels of VD in CD patients are associated with higher CRP and calprotectin levels, so VD levels might serve as an activity marker.

Keywords: Cholecalciferol; Crohn’s disease; Inflammatory bowel disease; Ulcerative colitis; Vitamin D.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.Approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the General Hospital of Athens “Laiko” and of the Medical School of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (approval number:28). Consent to participate: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Consent to publish: Patients signed informed consent regarding publishing their data. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Clinical trial number: Not applicable.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Serum vitamin D levels in Crohn’s disease in clinically active patients or patients in remission according to Harvey-Bradshaw index
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Serum vitamin D levels in Crohn’s disease in correlation with stool calprotectin levels
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Heat map illustrating the pairwise correlations between various laboratory and clinical characteristics of Crohn’s disease and vitamin D levels
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Serum vitamin D levels in ulcerative colitis in clinically active patients or patients in remission according to clinical Mayo score
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Serum vitamin D levels in ulcerative colitis in relation to Montreal classification
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Heat map illustrating the pairwise correlations between clinical features of ulcerative colitis and vitamin D levels
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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