Vitamin D Status and Fracture Healing: A Systematic Review of 63 Studies

Abstract

Category: Other Introduction/Purpose: There is little consensus on the effects of vitamin D on fracture healing. This review aims to clarify that effect in addition to determining trends in the classification of deficiency and supplementation. Methods: This systematic review searched Pubmed, Embase, and Web of Science for manuscripts related to vitamin D status/deficiency and fracture healing. Two independent reviewers screened articles, graded evidence quality, and extracted data. A total of 38 human studies, 11 in vivo studies and 14 systematic reviews were analyzed. Results: The median vitamin D deficiency prevalence reported amongst the human studies was 41.2% which is comparable to subset of patients with deficiency defined as 30 ng/mL for sufficiency. Although there is no radiographic evidence, daily smaller doses of vitamin D supplementation seem to have a stronger impact on clinical fracture healing than large boluses.