Vitamin D slows telomere attrition, prolonging life span

Vitamin D3 may help extend a person’s life expectancy, suggests a study, which notes a decrease in telomere attrition by 140 base pairs with 4 years of supplementation.

This trial included 1,054 participants assessed at the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. The researchers determined the leukocyte telomere length (LTL) through the Absolute Human Telomere Length Quantification quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method at baseline, year 2, and year 4. They analysed the intervention effect using mixed-effects linear regression models.

A total of 1,031 participants provided 2,571 samples, which were measured for LTL at baseline, year 2, and year 4. Vitamin D3 supplementation led to a significant reduction in LTL attrition (0.14 kilo base pairs, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.007‒0.27; p=0.039) over 4 years compared with placebo.

In overall trend analysis, participants on vitamin D3 supplementation had about 0.035-kilo base pair higher per year of follow-up than those on placebo. Marine omega-3 fatty acid (n-3 FA) supplementation, on the other hand, showed no significant impact on LTL at 2 or 4 years.

“Four years of supplementation with 2,000 IU/day vitamin D3 reduced telomere attrition by 140 base pairs, suggesting that vitamin D3 daily supplementation with or without n-3 FAs might have a role in counteracting telomere erosion or cell senescence,” the researchers said.