Vitamin D deficiency and falls

Abstract

Houston Merritt, MD, used to say that when one medicine was used in a wide variety of different diseases, it probably did not work for any of them. It is hard not to be equally skeptical about the importance of vitamin D in nonskeletal disorders when it is imputed to be helpful not only for bone-specific diseases such as rickets and osteomalacia, which are associated with vitamin D deficiency, but for diverse syndromes, such as falling, weakness, or cancer, which are themselves of diverse origins.1,–,4 Compounding this skepticism are the numbers of studies and meta-analyses producing conflicting results on the benefits of supplementing vitamin D and calcium in deficient and nondeficient people. There is no gainsaying the fact that vitamin D is important to humans at all ages. The bone diseases of rickets, in children, and osteomalacia, in adults, are well known disorders of vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency or hypocalcemia in children causes abnormal mineralization of the growth plates in the long bones, with secondary bone deformities. Osteomalacia is caused by vitamin D deficiency in adults causing abnormal bone mineralization, resulting in bone pain away from the joints, often with proximal muscle weakness and gait abnormalities. However, while vitamin D deficiency is required for …