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Jean Mayer United States Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts
Address correspondence to: Susan Harris, D.Sc., Jean Mayer USDA HNRCA at Tufts University, 711 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111. E-mail: sharris{at}hnrc.tufts.edu
| ABSTRACT |
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Methods: Twenty-five healthy young men (age 1835) and 25 healthy older men (6279) were randomly assigned to supplementation with 20 µg/day of vitamin D3 or to no intervention and followed for eight weeks. Plasma vitamin D3 was measured by high performance liquid chromatography and 25OHD was measured by competitive protein binding.
Results: Both young and old men in the supplemented group had pronounced, rapid and similar increases in plasma vitamin D3, whereas vitamin D3 concentrations were stable in the control group. By the end of the eight-week adaptation period, plasma vitamin D3 of young and old men had increased by 4.3 and 6.2 nmol/L respectively. In the supplemented group, mean 25OHD concentrations of both the young and old men increased during the study, and the magnitude of the change after eight weeks was nearly identical in the two age groups (22.5 and 22.1 nmol/L in the young and the old men, respectively). In the control group there was a modest decrease in 25OHD of both the young and old men.
Conclusions: There appears to be no age-related impairment among men in the absorption or metabolism of 20 µg/day of vitamin D3 taken orally for at least eight weeks.
Key words: vitamin D, cholecalciferol, intestinal absorption, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, aging, vitamin supplementation
| INTRODUCTION |
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1250 µg) produced similar vitamin D increases in young and old subjects [3,4] in two studies, and a smaller increase in 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) of old compared with young subjects in a third study [5]. Modest single doses of vitamin D3 resulted in similar [6] or smaller [7] increases in vitamin D and 25OHD among older subjects. Age differences in the effects of prolonged supplementation with vitamin D have been much less studied. In a recent small study, we reported that, compared with young men (age 2228 years), older men (age 6573 years) had smaller increases in 25OHD after three weeks of supplementation with 45 µg/day of vitamin D2 [8]. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the age difference we observed previously would be present when a smaller vitamin D dose was given (20 µg/day) and when subjects were followed for a longer period (eight weeks). In addition, we have now studied vitamin D3 instead of vitamin D2 because the former appears to increase serum 25OHD more efficiently than vitamin D2 [9]. | MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Timing of Study Visits
Baseline study visits were conducted from December through mid-February, and the median baseline visit date was January 14th. Randomization was balanced over time: the number of subjects in each group who were measured before the median baseline visit date were six supplemented young, six supplemented old, five control young and eight control old. Follow-up visits took place four, six and eight weeks after baseline, and all study visits were completed by mid-April.
Biochemical Measurements
Fasting was not required prior to the blood draws. Blood was drawn between about 6 AM and 2 PM. For each subject, blood was drawn at the same time (within ten minutes) at each of the four study visits. Plasma vitamin D3 was measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) at Boston University under the direction of Dr. T.C. Chen as previously described [10]. Briefly, an ethyl acetate extract was sequentially exposed to a C-18 cartridge, normal phase HPLC (mobile phase hexane:isopropanol 99.2:0.8), and reverse phase HPLC (mobile phase 25% methanol). The quantity of vitamin D present was determined by its UV absorbance.
Plasma 25OHD was measured in the Nutrition Evaluation Laboratory at Tufts University (NEL) by the competitive protein binding (CPB) method of Chen et al. [11], without a preparatory chromatography step. This method results in higher 25OHD estimates than are achieved by HPLC because it does not remove compounds that result in nonspecific interference at the DBP binding site [12]. As we have reported previously, 25OHD values by HPLC are approximately 60% of 25OHD values by our CPB method [8], whereas 25OHD by radioimmunoassay (Incstar) provides modestly higher estimates than our CBP method [13]. Plasma 1,25(OH)2D was measured in the NEL with double-antibody radioimmunoassay kits from DiaSorin Inc (Stillwater, MN). Serum intact parathyroid hormone was measured in the NEL with Allegro intact radioimmunoassay kits from Nichols Institute (San Juan Capistrano, CA). Serum total calcium was measured with a Nova 7 calcium analyzer (Nova Biochemical, Waltham, MA).
Other Measurements
Vitamin D intake over the previous four weeks was estimated with a short food frequency questionnaire that has been used extensively in our laboratory. Body mass index was calculated from height measured with a wall-mounted stadiometer and weight was measured with a digital scale.
Statistical Analysis
The primary endpoints in this study were changes in plasma vitamin D and 25OHD after eight weeks of supplementation. Values at interim time points are shown graphically, but were considered of secondary importance because they are less likely than the final measurements to reflect long term responses to supplementation. Unadjusted mean values of subject characteristics and biochemistries are shown in the tables. The effects of supplementation group, age group and their interaction on characteristics and biochemistries were investigated with analysis of variance (ANOVA) in the total study sample (n = 50). Two ANOVA models were constructed for each dependent variable. In the first, supplementation group, age group and a supplementation by age group interaction term were included as independent variables. After determining that the interaction term was not significant (at the 0.05 level), a second model that included only supplementation group and age group as independent variables was run. Further analyses examined potential predictors of changes in vitamin D and 25OHD by adding potential predictors as independent variables to those already included in the second ANOVA model. Other analyses included paired t tests to determine whether within-group changes in selected variables differed from zero, and partial correlations of selected baseline biochemistries with their changes. p values less than 0.05 were considered to indicate statistical significance. Analyses were conducted with SPSS (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL).
| RESULTS |
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Of age group, BMI, vitamin D intake and baseline 25OHD, the only predictor of the change in 25OHD was baseline 25OHD, and it was predictive only in the supplemented group (p for treatment by baseline 25OHD interaction: 0.047). The linear associations of change in 25OHD with baseline 25OHD in subjects who did and did not receive supplementation are illustrated in Fig. 2. Inclusion of quadratic terms did not appreciably improve the data fit.
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| DISCUSSION |
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This finding contrasts with those of our previous study in which young men had an almost 90% greater increase in 25OHD than older men after supplementation. The vitamin D dose given in the present study, 20 µg/day, was much lower than that given in the earlier study (120 µg/day), and it may be that a true age-related difference in vitamin D absorption or metabolism becomes apparent only at a moderately high dose. However, there is no obvious physiological reason that this should be the case. Another possible explanation for the different findings is that there is an age difference in the metabolism of vitamin D2, a synthetic or plant-derived compound not normally present in human circulation, but not vitamin D3, a physiologic compound in humans. There is evidence in both rats [14] and humans [9,15] that vitamin D3 supplementation results in a greater increase in 25OHD than does a comparable dose of vitamin D2, perhaps because of differing rates of enzymatic 25-hydroxylation in the mitochondrial fraction [16,17] or because some vitamin D2 but no vitamin D3 is metabolized to 24OHD instead of 25OHD [14]. Though speculative, it is possible that the relative importance of these mechanisms changes with age.
The results of this study are consistent with the preservation of intestinal fat absorption in aging. Vitamin D absorption is impaired in patients with intestinal fat malabsorption syndromes [18,19], but there is little evidence of a general decline in fat absorption in healthy aging. On the contrary, Arora et al. in a study of over 100 healthy subjects given controlled diets on a metabolic ward demonstrated preservation of intestinal fat absorption over a wide age range [20].
The study was well-powered to detect meaningful supplement and age-related changes in vitamin D and 25OHD, but, consistent with previous studies, changes in 1,25(OH)2D and PTH were much more variable, and our power to detect meaningful group differences in these measurements was limited. We observed no significant suppression of PTH with supplementation, but we did observe increases in 1,25(OH)2D. Need et al. observed an inverse association between 25OHD and 1,25(OH)2D in postmenopausal women with 25OHD concentrations up through 40 nmol/L but a positive association in women with higher 25OHD [21], such as the subjects we studied (about 60 nmol/L). They suggested that this may indicate that at low but not higher 25OHD concentrations, increased PTH-stimulated hydroxylation compensates for reduced vitamin D substrate. However, Barger-Lux et al. found no significant effect of vitamin D supplementation with 25 µg/day on 1,25(OH)2D in young men [22] with baseline 25OHD and changes in 25OHD similar to those we observed.
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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Received October 29, 2001. Accepted February 25, 2002.
| REFERENCES |
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