ABSTRACT Objective To conduct a meta‐analysis of clinical randomized controlled studies related to vitamin D supplements for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), to evaluate the clinical efficacy of vitamin D supplements for CKD patients complicated with anemia. Methods A literature review of the published literature in both English and Chinese was searched from the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI and Wanfang Data that were published from the inception date to January 2018. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) eligible for the inclusion and exclusion criteria were selected. The quality of eligible studies was assessed by the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Meta‐analysis was performed by using Revman 5.3 software. Results A total of 12 RCTs comprising 779 patients were included in this meta‐analysis, including 383 patients in the experimental group (with vitamin D supplementation) and 396 patients in the control group (without vitamin D supplementation). Meta‐analysis showed that vitamin D supplements could significantly increase the hemoglobin ( p < 0.01, SMD = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.02–1.45) and lower the dosage of erythropoietin required ( p < 0.01, SMD = −0.76, 95% CI: −1.09 to −0.43). Conclusion Use of vitamin D supplements can significantly elevate the hemoglobin concentration and reduce the dosage of erythropoietin. However, these findings remain to be validated by large‐scale, multi‐center, prospective RCTs.
Wanyan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.