You are here

  • Home
  • Online First
  • Calcium supplements associated with increased risk of cardiovascular death in men but not women

Article Text

Article menu

other Versions

PDF
Primary health care
Cohort study
Calcium supplements associated with increased risk of cardiovascular death in men but not women
  1. Mark J Bolland,
  2. Andrew Grey
  1. Department of Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  1. Correspondence to: Dr Mark J Bolland, Department of Medicine, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1042, New Zealand; m.bolland{at}auckland.ac.nz

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/eb-2013-101460

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Commentary on: Xiao Q, Murphy RA, Houston DK, et al. Dietary and supplemental calcium intake and cardiovascular disease mortality: the National Institutes of Health-AARP diet and health study. JAMA Intern Med 2013;173:639–46OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science

Implications for practice and research

  • Calcium supplements increase cardiovascular risk.

  • The role of calcium supplements in the management of osteoporosis should be reconsidered.

Context

In 2008, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) suggested that calcium supplements might increase the risk of cardiovascular events.1 Subsequent meta-analyses of RCTs examining calcium monotherapy and calcium and vitamin D confirmed these findings. In a pooled analysis of 13 RCTs of calcium with or without vitamin D (n=29 277) including 1391 patients with myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke,2 calcium increased the risk of MI by 25% and stroke by 15–20%. Xiao and colleagues explored this issue in the observational National Institutes of Health-American …

View Full Text

Request permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Copyright information:

Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions