A recent study published in Acta Medica Iranica found that vitamin D deficiency was associated with a three times increased risk of having arthralgia.
Arthralgia translates to joint pain and is caused by injury, infection, or illness. The most common cause is arthritis.
Vitamin D deficiency is associated with joint and muscle pain. This led the researchers to hypothesize that those with arthralgia are at greater risk for vitamin D deficiency.
Researchers recruited 167 patients with arthralgia not related to a known clinical condition. The researchers also enrolled a control group of 283 people without arthralgia. Vitamin D levels were measured and then compared between the two groups.
The researchers found that patients with arthralgia had significantly lower vitamin D levels compared to those without arthralgia. Specifically, 70.7% of patients with arthralgia were vitamin D deficient compared to 44.4% without arthralgia.
They also found that arthralgia was more prevalent in those with vitamin D levels less than 10 ng/ml compared to participants with levels of 30 ng/ml or higher.
“In conclusion this study indicated that unexplained arthralgia is significantly associated with vitamin D deficiency,” the researchers stated.
The researchers call for future studies to determine if vitamin D status relates to the development of inflammatory joint diseases in those with arthralgia.
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