Vitamin D in cutting cancer and heart-disease risk: does it live up to the hype?

In 10 seconds? A recent, large-scale clinical study suggests vitamin D supplementation does not reduce the risk of cancer or heart disease in people who already have sufficient levels of the micronutrient.

What’s with all the buzz around vitamin D? It’s an old favorite of medical researchers. In the early 1920s, vitamin D was discovered to prevent rickets (a disease that results in deficient bone development in children), and since then, researchers have looked at the association between it and everything from diabetes to cancer. Most recently, with the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a boom of publications reporting that lower vitamin D levels were associated with a higher risk and worse outcomes of infection. However, the data are highly mixed, with other publications concluding that vitamin D does not affect health outcomes related to COVID-19.