Effect of vitamin D supplementation on chronic liver disease: systematic literature review

It is long known that vitamin D deficiency was common in patients with liver disease, but little is known on the therapeutic effects of vitamin D, especially in patients with chronic liver disease. In this study, we aimed to systematically review the literatures and study the evidences in which the effects of vitamin D supplementation had been investigated on the severity of chronic liver disease or liver cirrhosis.
A systematic literature search was performed by using the following key terms “vitamin D supplementation” and “chronic liver disease” in the PubMed, Scopus and Google scholar to find relevant articles. After collecting the eligible documents, data were extracted and described based on the purpose of this review.
Of total 196 articles found, only 7 relevant documents with 518 studied patients were included. The results of this study showed that the levels of 25(OH) D were considerably lower in patients with chronic liver disease. Findings showed that vitamin D supplementation can rise up the mean serum level of 25(OH) D in patients with severe vitamin D deficiency, especially patients with liver cirrhosis.
The results of this review showed that vitamin D deficiency is associated with the severity of liver disease and may have prognostic value in the assessment of liver disease. Also, it was shown that vitamin D supplementation may be helpful for the treatment of liver disease at least in certain groups of patients.