University of Tasmania
Browse
155436 - the effect of vitamin D.pdf (439.51 kB)

Effect of vitamin D supplementation on depression in older Australian adults

Download (439.51 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 16:31 authored by Rahman, ST, Waterhouse, M, Duarte Romero, B, Baxter, C, English, DR, Almeida, OP, Berk, M, Ebeling, PR, Armstrong, BK, McLeod, DSA, Hartel, G, O'Connell, RL, Pham, H, Scott, JG, van der Pols, JC, Alison VennAlison Venn, Webb, PM, Whiteman, DC, Neale, RE

Objectives: To investigate whether vitamin D supplementation reduces depressive symptoms and incidence of antidepressant use.

Methods: We used data from the D-Health Trial (N = 21,315), a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of monthly vitamin D3 for the prevention of all-cause mortality. Participants were Australians aged 60-84 years. Participants completed the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) at 1, 2 and 5 years after randomization to measure depressive symptoms; national prescribing records were used to capture antidepressant use. We used mixed models and survival models.

Results: Analyses of PHQ-9 scores included 20,487 participants (mean age 69·3 years, 46% women); the mean difference (MD) in PHQ-9 score (vitamin D vs. placebo) was 0·02 (95% CI -0·06, 0·11). There was negligible difference in the prevalence of clinically relevant depression (PHQ-9 score ≥10) (odds ratio 0·99; 95% CI 0·90, 1·08). We included 16,670 participants in the analyses of incident antidepressant use (mean age 69·4 years, 43% women). Incidence of antidepressant use was similar between the groups (hazard ratio [HR] 1·04; 95% CI 0·96, 1·12). In subgroup analyses, vitamin D improved PHQ-9 scores in those taking antidepressants at baseline (MD -0·25; 95% CI -0·49, -0·01; p-interaction = 0·02). It decreased risk of antidepressant use in participants with predicted 25(OH)D concentration <50 nmol/L (HR 0·88; 95% CI 0·75, 1·02; p-interaction = 0·01) and increased risk in those with predicted 25(OH)D ≥ 50 nmol/L (HR 1·10; 95% CI 1·01, 1·20).

Conclusion: Monthly supplementation with high-dose vitamin D3 was not of benefit for measures of depression overall, but there was some evidence of benefit in subgroup analyses.

History

Publication title

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

Volume

38

Pagination

1-13

ISSN

0885-6230

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Place of publication

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, England, W Sussex, Po19 8Sq

Rights statement

© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Prevention of human diseases and conditions; Mental health

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Categories

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC