Background: Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency are common in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). We aimed to prospectively examine the associations of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations with all-cause and cause-specific mortality among adult patients with existing CVD. Methods: We included 37,079 patients with CVD from the UK Biobank study, a prospective cohort of half a million participants aged 40-69 years. We defined patients with CVD as those who suffered coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, or stroke. The associations of serum 25(OH)D concentration with all-cause and cause-specific mortality were examined by using multivariable Cox regression models and competing risk analyses. Results: Among 37,079 patients with CVD at baseline, 57.5% were subjected to vitamin D deficiency (i.e., 25[OH]D <50 nmol/L). During a median follow-up of 11.7 years, 6,319 total deaths occurred, including 2,161 deaths from CVD, 2,230 deaths from cancer, 623 deaths from respiratory disease, and 1,305 other-cause deaths. We observed non-linear inverse associations for all-cause, cancer, respiratory disease, and other-cause mortality (P-non-linearity <0.01) and approximately linear inverse associations for CVD mortality (P-non-linearity = 0.074). Among CVD patients with vitamin D deficiency, per 10 nmol/L increment in serum 25(OH)D concentrations was associated with an 12% reduced risk for all-cause mortality and 9% reduced risk for CVD mortality. Conclusion: Among patients with existing CVD, increasing levels in serum 25(OH)D were independently associated with a decreased risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. These findings suggest that elevated serum 25(OH)D concentration benefits CVD patients with vitamin D deficiency.
Keywords: UK Biobank; cardiovascular disease; cohort study; mortality; vitamin D.
Copyright © 2021 Dai, Liu and Chen.