Background: All-cause mortality in the population<65 years is 30% higher in Glasgow than in equally deprived Liverpool and Manchester. We investigated a hypothesis that low vitamin D in this population may be associated with premature mortality via a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Methods: Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and grey literature sources were searched until February 2012 for relevant studies. Summary statistics were combined in an age-stratified meta-analysis.
Results: Nine studies were included in the meta-analysis, representing 24,297 participants, 5,324 of whom died during follow-up. The pooled hazard ratio for low compared to high vitamin D demonstrated a significant inverse association (HR 1.19, 95% CI 1.12-1.27) between vitamin D levels and all-cause mortality after adjustment for available confounders. In an age-stratified meta-analysis, the hazard ratio for older participants was 1.25 (95% CI 1.14-1.36) and for younger participants 1.12 (95% CI 1.01-1.24).
Conclusions: Low vitamin D status is inversely associated with all-cause mortality but the risk is higher amongst older individuals and the relationship is prone to residual confounding. Further studies investigating the association between vitamin D deficiency and all-cause mortality in younger adults with adjustment for all important confounders (or using randomised trials of supplementation) are required to clarify this relationship.