Dialysis Patients Live Longer with Newer Vitamin D

[okarol]

Dialysis Patients Live Longer with Newer Vitamin D

Thursday October 04, 2007

ISLAMABAD: A newer form of vitamin D, called paricalcitol, may help people with kidney failure live longer, new research suggests.

Vitamin D plays an important role in controlling levels of calcium and phosphorus in the blood. In order to do this, however, vitamin D must be "activated" or chemically altered by the kidneys.

People with kidney failure have problems activating their vitamin D, so, as a consequence, their calcium and phosphorus levels are abnormal.

To overcome this problem, an activated form of vitamin D, known as calcitriol, is typically given to these patients. Unfortunately, there is concern that the drug may lead to high levels of calcium and phosphorus that hasten death. Paricalcitol also raises these levels, but to a lesser extent, and could, therefore, improve patient survival.

The new study, which is reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, involved more than 65,000 kidney failure patients who had been getting their blood cleansed with dialysis for many years.

Between 1999 and 2001, these patients were treated with paricalcitol or calcitriol.

Patients who received paricalcitol had a 16 percent better chance of survival than those who received calcitriol. As expected, calcium and phosphorus levels increased to a much lesser extent in the paricalcitol group compared with the calcitriol group.

"This is the first evidence that a specific form of vitamin D" can improve survival among dialysis patients, Dr. Ravi Thadhani, a researcher involved in the study, said in a statement.

 

"While we await verification of these results, we also need to investigate the mechanism behind this improved survival," Thadhani, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, noted. "That could give us more knowledge about how vitamin D is really working and how we might apply these findings to patients before they start dialysis, as well as those who undergo a kidney transplant."

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?191139

[glitter]

Dr. Thadhani is my sister-in-laws friend for twenty years, he is a terrific researcher, and took the time to talk with us right before my husband went on dialysis, and right after when hubby was so sick. He advised me, as a healthy adult - to supplement my Vit D as a way to assure my kidneys optimum health. very nice man.

[Jill D.]

I was recently prescribed megadoses of vitamin D. My neph's offce said that the population in general does not get enough vitamin D (especially in non-sunny areas) but that it is really helpful for people with kidney disease.