Seniors who take calcium supplements along with vitamin D may lengthen their lives, a new analysis suggests, according to HealthDay News.
However, only the combination of the two appears to be effective; vitamin D by itself had no benefit, the researchers noted.
"Our study provides evidence of a cause-effect relationship – that calcium and vitamin D causes beneficial effects to general health," said study author Dr. Lars Rejnmark, an assistant professor at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark. "Calcium with vitamin D has now been proven to reduce risk of osteoporotic fractures and death in the elderly."
The report will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
For the study, Rejnmark's team collected data on more than 70,000 people who were around 70 years old and had taken part in one of eight trials that pitted vitamin D or vitamin D plus calcium against an inactive placebo by randomly assigning participants to one of the treatments.
The investigators found that, over three years, vitamin D alone did not reduce the risk of death (mortality), but when taken with calcium mortality was reduced 9 percent.
