Vitamin D ‘can improve heart function in people with heart failure’

Daily vitamin D supplementation has the potential to improve heart function among people affected by chronic heart failure.

This is according to the findings of a new five-year study from the University of Leeds, which involved 160 patients who were being treated for heart failure using therapies such as beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors and pacemakers.

In the 80 patients who took daily supplements of vitamin D3, the heart's pumping function was shown to improve from 26 percent to 34 percent, an effect that was not replicated in those in the placebo control group.

Calcium-based supplements were avoided in this trial due to previous studies having shown that calcium can cause further problems for heart failure patients.

It is hoped that this approach could lead to a new therapeutic approach that lessens the need for patients to be fitted with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs).

Dr Klaus Witte, a consultant cardiologist at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "ICDs are expensive and involve an operation. If we can avoid an ICD implant in just a few patients, then that is a boost to patients and the NHS as a whole."