Responses
Other responses
Jump to comment:
- Published on: 28 December 2020
- Published on: 13 November 2020
- Published on: 28 December 2020Improving the quality of life in asthmatic patients supplemented with vitamin D: variability in the studies and discrepancy in the results.
Vitamin D could have potentiating effects on the innate and adaptive immune system (1). This would explain a potential defense effect against respiratory infections. Based on this, this vitamin has been linked to respiratory diseases such as COPD, asthma, respiratory infections and even lung cancer (2). In November 2020, our work team published the ACVID randomized clinical trial, and we have received a letter from Dr. Nobuyuki Horita asking us two questions about our results. In the first place, he lists a series of studies that show a great discrepancy in the results on quality of life, requesting our opinion on this discrepancy. Second, he asks for our opinion on the results of our work in terms of improving quality of life without an increase in lung function.
Show More
The authors continue to maintain that “some beneficial association was observed in the group of patients receiving vitamin D compared to the placebo group” in the studies analyzed in our article. In fact, in the VIDA research (3) the authors describe a small but significant association with the decrease in the dose of ciclesonide required to maintain asthma control in the vitamin D group. It is true that in this study the quality improvement Life is better in the control group, but this is a secondary objective. In the ViDiAs study (4) the authors found no significant differences in the reduction of asthma attacks or upper airway infections (coprimary outcomes), but, although they did not find clinical impr...Conflict of Interest:
None declared. - Published on: 13 November 2020Does vitamin D supplementation in patients with vitamin D deficiency improve quality of life?
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are two major obstructive lung diseases. Many epidemiological and genetic research including ours suggested possible association between vitamin D (VitD) and these diseases.[1 2] A meta-analysis by Jolliffe in 2019 demonstrated that VitD supplementation surely reduced the frequency of exacerbations in COPD patients who had VitD deficiency.[3] Vitamin D is an attractive option especially in developing countries because some of currently used medications such as bronchodilators and biologics are pricy. Given such background, VitD supplementation has been expected to be a new strategy for asthmatic patients with VitD deficiency. Thus, we read a report by Dr. Andújar-Espinosa et al. with a great interest.[4] The ACVID trial, a well-designed triple-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT), indicated greater improvement of quality of life (QOL) measured by Asthma Control Test (ACT) score as the primary endpoint, in the calcifediol arm compared to the placebo arm. Nonetheless, we have two concerns for this trial.
Show More
First, there was a considerable discrepancy about the efficacy with previous reports. Inconsistency is a reason to degrade the quality of evidence.[5] Authors mentioned that "some beneficial association was observed in the group of patients receiving VitD compared with the placebo group" in all previous studies.[4] However, very limited data support the QOL improvement observed in ACVID trial. Dr. And...Conflict of Interest:
None declared.