Is There an Association Between Inflammation and Serum-Vitamin D? – Results of a Retrospective Analysis of Hospitalized Geriatric Patients

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Purpose: Vitamin D deficiency is a common finding in geriatric patients. The ESPEN micronutrient guideline states that vitamin D serum levels significantly decrease in the presence of inflammation and should be interpreted with caution. This is of great interest for hospital care and would imply a significant change to the current approach to hospitalized patients with suspected vitamin D deficiency. Patients and methods: To evaluate the association of vitamin D and inflammation, we reanalyzed the data set of serum 25(OH)D-Levels of 687 consecutive geriatric hospitalized patients of a previously published study. Results: We found that vitamin D deficiency (< 20 ng/dl) was prevalent in 78.0% and vitamin D insufficiency (20– 30 ng/dl) in 9.9% of patients. Sperman's correlation showed a significant but very weak correlation (R = − 0.100, P < 0.01) of serum vitamin D and C-reactive protein. However, linear regression with the inclusion of age and gender revealed no significant association (beta-coefficient − 0.070; p=0.067). Conclusion: In this study, we could not confirm a significant and clinically relevant association between serum vitamin D levels and inflammation, contrasting with a previous study. However, longitudinal studies need to be performed to draw a final conclusion.