The fact that deaths are more common in winter is rather due to the fact that people move around less and are more exposed to air pollution and respiratory infections. This is shown by a new large study from Umeå University.
During the year, the levels of the vitamin vary. In August and September, 79 percent had higher levels of the vitamin, while the levels were lowest in April. However, it had no effect on cardiovascular diseases.
The highest mortality occurred a few months after the lowest vitamin D levels, at the same time as mortality began to decrease already in May, shortly after the low vitamin D levels.
The researchers could therefore establish in the study that there is no connection between vitamin D levels and mortality in cardiovascular diseases.
"Another such 'truth' is that we Northerners would have a greater deficiency (of vitamin D) than Southerners. We have previously been able to show that this does not apply", says the lead author Viktor Oskarsson, specialist physician in internal medicine at Piteå Hospital and affiliated with Umeå Medicine, in a press release.
"Not to say that vitamin D supplements are bad or lack significance for all individuals, but it is not a universal cure", he says.
The study is based on data from nearly 80,000 people in six European countries and is published in the scientific journal PLOS One.
Cardiovascular diseases include, among other things, stroke, heart attack, arrhythmias, heart failure, inherited cardiovascular disease, and congenital heart defects.
In Sweden, over 2 million people with cardiovascular diseases.
About 30,000 Swedes die from the diseases each year and it is the leading cause of death in Sweden.
Approximately one-quarter of those who get stroke are between 20 and 69 years old.
One in three who get heart attack is between 20 and 69 years old, the same figure applies to those who suffer from sudden cardiac arrest.
Sources: Region Stockholm, The Heart-Lung Foundation
