Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Jan 29;16(3):391.
doi: 10.3390/nu16030391.

Vitamin D Supplementation: A Review of the Evidence Arguing for a Daily Dose of 2000 International Units (50 µg) of Vitamin D for Adults in the General Population

Pawel Pludowski  1 , William B Grant  2 , Spyridon N Karras  3 , Armin Zittermann  4 , Stefan Pilz  5
Affiliations
Review

Vitamin D Supplementation: A Review of the Evidence Arguing for a Daily Dose of 2000 International Units (50 µg) of Vitamin D for Adults in the General Population

Pawel Pludowski et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency is considered a public health problem due to its worldwide high prevalence and adverse clinical consequences regarding musculoskeletal health. In addition, vitamin D may also be crucial for the prevention of certain extraskeletal diseases. Despite decades of intensive scientific research, several knowledge gaps remain regarding the precise definition of vitamin D deficiency and sufficiency, the health benefits of improving vitamin D status, and the required vitamin D intakes. Consequently, various societies and expert groups have released heterogeneous recommendations on the dosages for vitamin D supplementation. In this brief narrative review, we outline and discuss recent advances regarding the scientific evidence arguing for a daily vitamin D supplementation with 2000 international units (IU) (50 µg) of vitamin D3 to prevent and treat vitamin D deficiency. According to data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), such a dose may improve some health outcomes and is sufficient to raise and maintain serum 25(OH)D concentrations above 50 nmol/L (20 ng/mL) and above 75 nmol/L (30 ng/mL) in >99% and >90% of the general adult population, respectively. According to large vitamin D RCTs, there are no significant safety concerns in supplementing such a dose for several years, even in individuals with an already sufficient vitamin D status at baseline. A daily vitamin D supplementation with 2000 IU (50 µg) may be considered a simple, effective, and safe dosage to prevent and treat vitamin D deficiency in the adult general population.

Keywords: 2000 IU; RCT; dosage; guideline; practice; recommendation; safety; supplementation; vitamin D.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

S.P. received honoraria from Procter & Gamble. W.B.G. receives funding for research from Bio-Tech Pharmacal Inc. (Fayetteville, AR, USA). The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dose–response trend of hazard ratios of death from all causes by standardized 25-hydroxyvitamin D. Dose–response trend of hazard ratios of all-cause mortality by standardized 25-hydroxyvitamin D were adjusted for age, sex, BMI, and season of blood drawing concentrations. Hazard ratios (blue line with 95% confidence interval as the dotted blue lines) refer to the 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration of 83.4  nmol/L (i.e., the median 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration for the group with 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations from 75 to 99.99  nmol/L). Reproduced from Ref. [64] under the terms of the CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bouillon R., Marcocci C., Carmeliet G., Bikle D., White J.H., Dawson-Hughes B., Lips P., Munns C.F., Lazaretti-Castro M., Giustina A., et al. Skeletal and Extraskeletal Actions of Vitamin D: Current Evidence and Outstanding Questions. Endocr. Rev. 2019;40:1109–1151. doi: 10.1210/er.2018-00126. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bouillon R., Manousaki D., Rosen C., Trajanoska K., Rivadeneira F., Richards J.B. The health effects of vitamin D supplementation: Evidence from human studies. Nat. Rev. Endocrinol. 2022;18:96–110. doi: 10.1038/s41574-021-00593-z. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Martinaityte I., Kamycheva E., Didriksen A., Jakobsen J., Jorde R. Vitamin D Stored in Fat Tissue During a 5-Year Intervention Affects Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels the Following Year. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 2017;102:3731–3738. doi: 10.1210/jc.2017-01187. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Crowe F.L., Steur M., Allen N.E., Appleby P.N., Travis R.C., Key T.J. Plasma concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D in meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans: Results from the EPIC-Oxford study. Public Health Nutr. 2011;14:340–346. doi: 10.1017/S1368980010002454. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Pilz S., Zittermann A., Trummer C., Theiler-Schwetz V., Lerchbaum E., Keppel M.H., Grubler M.R., Marz W., Pandis M. Vitamin D testing and treatment: A narrative review of current evidence. Endocr. Connect. 2019;8:R27–R43. doi: 10.1530/EC-18-0432. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.