Vitamin D intake ‘may help’ reduce risk of severe asthma attack

Researchers have said taking vitamin D can reduce the risk of having a severe asthma attack.

According to a study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, data from 955 participants in seven previous randomised controlled trials showed that vitamin D intake cut the likelihood of occurrence.

A 30 percent reduction in the rate of asthma attacks requiring treatments with steroid tablets or injections and a 50 percent reduction in the risk of experiencing at least one asthma attack requiring hospitalisation were observed.

Adrian Martineau, lead researcher, said: “These results add to the ever growing body of evidence that vitamin D can support immune function as well as bone health.

“On average, three people in the UK die from asthma attacks every day.

“Vitamin D is safe to take and relatively inexpensive so supplementation represents a potentially cost-effective strategy to reduce this problem.”

According to David Jolliffe, co-author of the study, “Our results are largely based on data from adults with mild to moderate asthma – children and adults with severe asthma were relatively under-represented in the dataset, so our findings cannot necessarily be generalised to these patient groups at this stage.

“Further clinical trials are on-going internationally, and we hope to include data from them in a future analysis to determine whether the promise of today’s results is confirmed in an even larger and more diverse group of patients.”