Calcium and vitamin D supplementation are not associated with risk of incident ischemic cardiac events or death: findings from the UK Biobank cohort

Abstract

We investigated associations between calcium/vitamin D supplementation and incident cardiovascular events/deaths in a UK population-based cohort. UK Biobank is a large prospective cohort comprising 502,637 men and women aged 40-69 years at recruitment. Supplementation with calcium/vitamin D was self-reported, and information on incident hospital admission (ICD-10) for ischaemic heart disease (IHD), myocardial infarction (MI) any cardiovascular event, and subsequent death, was obtained from linkage to national registers. Cox Proportional Hazards models were used to investigate longitudinal relationships between calcium/vitamin D supplementation and hospital admission for men/women, controlling for covariates. 475,255 participants (median age 58years, 55.8% women) had complete data on calcium/vitamin D supplementation. 33,437 participants reported taking calcium supplements; 19,089 vitamin D; 10,007 both. In crude and adjusted analyses, there were no associations between use of calcium supplements and risk of incident hospital admission with either IHD, MI or any cardiovascular event, or subsequent death. Thus, for example, in unadjusted models, the hazard ratio (HR) for admission with myocardial infarction was 0.97 (95%CI:0.79,1.20; p = 0.79) amongst women taking calcium supplementation. Corresponding HR for men: 1.16 (95%CI:0.92,1.46;p = 0.22). After full adjustment, HR(95%CI) were 0.82 (0.62,1.07), p = 0.14 amongst women and 1.12 (0.85,1.48), p = 0.41 amongst men. Adjusted HR(95%CI) for admission with IHD were 1.05 (0.92,1.19), p = 0.50 amongst women and 0.97 (0.82,1.15), p = 0.77 amongst men. Results were similar for any cardiovascular admission and for vitamin D and combination supplementation. There were no associations with death, and in women, further adjustment for HRT use did not alter the associations. In this very large prospective cohort, there was no evidence that use of calcium/vitamin D supplementation was associated with increased risk of hospital admission or death following ischaemic or non-ischaemic cardiovascular events.

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ORCID for Nicholas C. Harvey: orcid.org/0000-0002-8194-2512

ORCID for Stefania D'Angelo: orcid.org/0000-0002-7267-1837

ORCID for Elizabeth M. Curtis: orcid.org/0000-0002-5147-0550

ORCID for Karen Walker-Bone: orcid.org/0000-0002-5992-1459

ORCID for Cyrus Cooper: orcid.org/0000-0003-3510-0709

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