Taking Vitamin D With Fish Oil

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Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease and may be amenable to vitamin D supplementation. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that requires a certain amount of fat in the diet for adequate absorption. We performed a randomized, open-label, crossover trial to evaluate whether adding fish oil (a fatty acid) to vitamin D would improve absorption. A total of 16 long-term dialysis patients with baseline 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels less than 10 ng/mL were included in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to receive 4 weeks of vitamin D (ergocalciferol, 50,000 units once weekly) with placebo or vitamin D given concurrently with fish oil (Lovaza, 2 g once weekly), after which time treatments were reversed. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels were measured at baseline and at the end of each 4-week treatment period.

After the first 4 weeks of treatment, mean 25-hydroxyvitamin level was lower in participants who received fish oil versus placebo (22.6 ± 10.9 versus 38.7 ± 18.6 ng/mL; P = 0.07; Fig 1). 25-Hydroxyvitamin D levels decreased in both groups during the next 4 weeks despite continual supplementation with ergocalciferol; however, the decrease was greater in those receiving fish oil. Overall, mean increases in 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels were 11.2 ± 22.5 ng/mL with ergocalciferol alone versus 2.5 ± 17.6 ng/mL with concurrent fish oil. Although numerically lower with fish oil, this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.4). According to our study, adding fish oil to vitamin D did not improve its absorption.

Figure thumbnail gr1 — Figure 1 Mean serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels at baseline, week 4, and week 8 in participants assigned to placebo followed by fish oil (n = 7) compared with participants assigned to fish oil followed by placebo (n = 9). 25-Hydroxyvitamin D in ng/mL may be converted to nmol/L by multiplying by 2.496.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1053/j.ajkd.2008.11.010

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Taking Vitamin D With Fish Oil

Source: https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(08)01685-5/fulltext

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Taking Vitamin D With Fish Oil