Vitamin D and health care costs: results from two independent population-based cohort studies
Clinical Nutrition, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2017.10.014
A. Hannemann anke.hannemann at uni-greifswald.de, H. Wallaschofski, M. Nauck, P. Marschall, S. Flessa, H.J. Grabe, C.O. Schmidt, S.E. Baumeister
Chart of study data by GrassrootHealth
Chart by Vitamin D Life
Cost savings with Vitamin D includes the following
- Medical problems are thought to be a cause of 66 percent of bankruptcies – April 2019
- Vitamin D is the 3rd most important contributor to health, following exercise and food
- 10 fewer days of ICU Mechanical Ventilation 300,000 IU injection of vitamin D – RCT March 2019
- Employers should give night shift workers free vitamin D – GMB Union June 2019
- Biology of Vitamin D – 30ng min., 50ng preferred, 1000X lower cost than health problem – Feb 2019
- Heart attack ICU costs cut in half by Vitamin D – Oct 2018
- Cost of US health exceeds the cost of food
- Curing patients is not a sustainable business model – Goldman Sachs – April 2018
- Medical insurance does not compensate for job loss by older workers who are hospitalized – Sept 2016
- If you cannot readily get medical treatment, consider Alternative Med such as vitamin D
 Download the PDF from Sci-Hub via Vitamin D Life
Background & Aims
Vitamin D deficiency is associated with higher morbidity. However, there is few data regarding the effect of vitamin D deficiency on health care costs. This study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between the serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D concentration (25OHD) and direct health care costs and hospitalization in two independent samples of the general population in North-Eastern Germany.
Methods
We studied 7,217 healthy individuals from the ‘Study of Health in Pomerania’ (SHIP n=3,203) and the ‘Study of Health in Pomerania-Trend’ (SHIP-Trend n=4,014) who had valid 25OHD measurements and provided data on annual total costs, outpatient costs, hospital stays, and inpatient costs. The associations between 25OHD concentrations (modelled continuously using factional polynomials) and health care costs were examined using a generalized linear model with gamma distribution and a log link. Poisson regression models were used to estimate relative risks of hospitalization.
Results
In cross-sectional analysis of SHIP-Trend, non-linear associations between the 25OHD concentration and inpatient costs and hospitalization were detected: participants with 25OHD concentrations of 5, 10 and 15 ng/ml had 226.1%, 51.5% and 14.1%, respectively, higher inpatient costs than those with 25OHD concentrations of 20 ng/ml (overall p-value=0.001) in multivariable models.
Conclusions
We found a relation between lower 25OHD concentrations and increased inpatient health care costs and hospitalization. Our results thus indicate an influence of vitamin D deficiency on health care costs in the general population.