Vitamin D Fails To Benefit Blacks

Vitamin D supplementation does not appear to have the same bone-strengthening benefits in post-menopausal black women as it does in older white women, according to a study in yesterday’s issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“To our knowledge, this study is the first clinical trial examining the effect of vitamin D on bone loss in African-American women,” bone specialists at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., wrote.

“Our study demonstrated a lack of benefit of vitamin D supplementation in loss of skeletal mass in calcium-sufficient African-American women in midlife.”

Dr. John F. Aloia, chief academic officer at Winthrop and the report’s first author, said he and his colleagues had assumed that giving black post-menopausal women substantially more vitamin D than is recommended would decrease bone loss in that population. In fact, he said, many scientists hypothesized it would have this effect.

The authors said previous trials that “suggest a benefit of vitamin D supplementation have been conducted with white participants.”

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