The effect of vitamin D on clinical outcomes in tuberculosis

Introduction: Vitamin D enhances immune responses to tubercle bacillus. The aim of our study is to determine the improvements of clinical outcome in patients taking cholecalciferol as supplement accompany anti-tuberculosis treatment. Materials and methods: In a placebo-controlled and double blinded clinical trial sixty patients with pulmonary tuberculosis from March 2014 to July 2015 in Markazi province of Iran were randomized to take either single dose of 450,000 International Units of cholecalciferol or placebo. Evaluation was carried out at one, two and three months later. The first outcome was reduction in TB score and the secondary outcome was smear conversion and improvement of quality of life. Results: Mean calcidiol levels for the whole study population were 22.81 ± 10.76 ng/ml and there have been no associations between baseline calcidiol levels and sputum smear burden (P-value = 0.54). There was an association of TB severity score with lower levels of Vitamin D (P-value = 0.043). The Short Form (SF)-12 health survey scoring at enrolment in two arms did not differ significantly (P-value = 0.786). Two months’ later findings indicate that Vitamin D treatment had a positive effect on progressing health-related quality of life (P-value = 0.019) in each subscale of physical health score (P-value = 0.028) and mental health score (P-value = 0.025). Conclusions: Our findings indicated that single dose cholecalciferol supplementation can lead to improving clinical outcome in tuberculous patients especially in those with calcidiol deficiency and improve the health-related quality of life of TB patients.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-SA

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