Vitamin D Supplementation in Critically Ill ICU Patients

I am constantly reading and educating myself in an attempt to gain whatever edge I possibly can for my patients. Their survival and quality of life is what I have personally dedicated my life to. Being someone who is following along on my journey, I can safely assume you’re doing the same. I have become quite fond of metabolic resuscitation, using Vitamin C, thiamine, and stress dose steroids, with the Paul Marik data and have been utilizing it in my practice for several years. No harm, cheap drugs, let’s do it! I’ve seen some great results from it but I also would like to see some better data (hopefully next month!). Now it’s time to look at Vitamin D in the ICU.

That being said, this is a brand new article published in the NEJM on December 11th of this year (2019). I can’t say I was excited about the prospects of this article, but all in all I was hoping it would help. Unfortunately, it does not. Sigh.

This was a well done study about Vitamin D in the ICU with a high aspiration of enrolling 3000 patients. Unfortunately, they did not get there. They stopped the study early because of futility. I don’t know if the researchers let out a sigh of relief at that point that their study was complete, or if they were defeated because they wanted to see a positive outcome. Who knows. Overall I am glad that we have an answer for this question and would like to give a hat tip to everyone who participated in this study.

To learn about Vitamin D and COVID CLICK HERE.

-EJ

Citations

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute PETAL Clinical Trials Network, Ginde AA, Brower RG, Caterino JM, Finck L, Banner-Goodspeed VM, Grissom CK, Hayden D, Hough CL, Hyzy RC, Khan A, Levitt JE, Park PK, Ringwood N, Rivers EP, Self WH, Shapiro NI, Thompson BT, Yealy DM, Talmor D. Early High-Dose Vitamin D3 for Critically Ill, Vitamin D-Deficient Patients. N Engl J Med. 2019 Dec 26;381(26):2529-2540. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1911124. Epub 2019 Dec 11. PMID: 31826336; PMCID: PMC7306117.
Link to Abstract
Link to FULL FREE ARTICLE

NEW META-ANALYSIS from 9/22/22
Menger J, Lee ZY, Notz Q, Wallqvist J, Hasan MS, Elke G, Dworschak M, Meybohm P, Heyland DK, Stoppe C. Administration of vitamin D and its metabolites in critically ill adult patients: an updated systematic review with meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Crit Care. 2022 Sep 6;26(1):268. doi: 10.1186/s13054-022-04139-1. PMID: 36068584; PMCID: PMC9446655.
Link to Article
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