UNMC, Omaha VA team to examine whether vitamin D prevents diabetes

Cyrus Desouza, M.D.

The Department of Veterans Affairs Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System and UNMC are looking for volunteers to take part in the first definitive, large-scale clinical trial to investigate if a vitamin D supplement helps prevent or delay type 2 diabetes in adults who have prediabetes, who are at high risk for type 2.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study is taking place at about 20 study sites across the United States, including the Omaha VA Medical Center and UNMC.

The multiyear Vitamin D and Type 2 Diabetes (D2d) study will include about 2,500 people. Its goal is to learn if vitamin D — specifically D3 (cholecalciferol) — will prevent or delay type 2 diabetes in adults aged 30 or older with prediabetes. People with prediabetes have blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes.

“This study is designed to look exclusively at the effects of vitamin D in preventing type 2 diabetes,” said Cyrus Desouza, M.D., the principal investigator for the Omaha study. “Some smaller studies have indicated that vitamin D might be effective in preventing blood glucose levels from getting worse.

“If this is true, it will show that giving people vitamin D is a very inexpensive way to prevent people from getting diabetes, by giving them a less-expensive vitamin that costs just cents a day compared to the thousands of dollars we spend on diabetes treatment drugs,” said Dr. Desouza, chief of endocrinology at UNMC and an endocrinologist at the Omaha VA Medical Center.

D2d is the first study to directly examine if a daily dose of 4,000 International Units (IUs) of vitamin D — greater than a typical adult intake of 600-800 IUs a day, but within limits deemed appropriate for clinical research by the Institute of Medicine — helps keep people with prediabetes from getting type 2 diabetes. Based on earlier studies, researchers speculate that vitamin D could reduce the diabetes risk by 25 percent. The study will also examine if sex, age or race affect the potential of vitamin D to reduce diabetes risk.

D2d builds on previous NIH-funded studies of methods to delay or prevent type 2 diabetes, including the Diabetes Prevention Program, which showed that, separately, lifestyle changes to lose a modest amount of weight and the drug metformin are both effective in slowing development of type 2 diabetes in people with prediabetes.