It is recommended for healthy adults and helps on several fronts, from bone fragility to inflammation control, but now the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) decided to put a squeeze on doctors on his prescription. Choice that the doctors did not like. Updated the eligibility criteria based on new scientific evidence, which have also definitively clarified the lack of benefits against Covid as some voices assumed at the time. «It is based on an economic logic, but myopic from a clinical and preventive point of view. Experimental studies show how important vitamin D is for the proper functioning of various systems, from the immune system to the skeletal system. The result is that we continue to recommend it and citizens almost always pay for it on their own,” he declared Annamaria Colao, president of the Italian Society of Endocrinology (SIE). The expert is keen to recognize that the use of vitamin D supplements is among the most debated topics in the scientific community in which there are different positions and controversies.
What is vitamin D and what is it for?
The vitamin that divides Aifa and the medical community is recommended for many health problems. To produce it, it is synthesized with the sun’s rays and this hormone (cholecalciferol, calcifediol) has also become famous as a cure for infantile rachidism, a pathology linked to pain in the bones and joints. «Vitamin D circulating in the blood is a parameter of good health, while its deficiency is linked to a high inflammatory level in the body, with all the related diseases, from the development of tumorsto the worsening of obesity, diabetes, hypertension», explains Colao. To defend the decision is Nicola Magrini of Aifa, who underlines that already in 2019 there was a limitation in the prescription charged by the National Health System. Limit that led to savings of several tens of millions a year. Now the blood hormone levels for which the vitamin can be prescribed have been lowered again, based on new scientific research. In particular, the reference is to a study published on Nejm in 2022 and one up Jama in 2020 where it is concluded that “supplementation with more than adequate doses of vitamin D and for several years does not reduce the risk of fracture in the healthy population, without risk factors for osteoporosis”.
The protest of the endocrinologists
But according to the president of the endocrinologists, these scientific results “show that by itself it does not prevent fractures, and this is true because bone fragility can also be due to nutritional deficiencies throughout life and other pathologies, which the study does not consider ». According to Colao, the conclusions on the lack of effectiveness against the Coronavirus also have something to say. «Patients who fell ill with Covid and were given vitamin D in addition to therapies were enrolled in these fed-ups. Supplementation has not shown benefits, but it is not surprising that something that is used for prevention, if used as a cure, has no effect”.