Evaluating the effect of vitamin D3 supplementation on anxiety, depression, sleep quality, and physical morbidity in students of Kerman University of Medical Sciences

Depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders are common problems in today's societies, especially among students. Studies have shown that vitamin D3 levels are associated with these disorders. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of vitamin D3 supplementation on anxiety, depression, sleep quality and physical morbidity in university students.

In this double-blind clinical trial study, 60 students without underlying disease were participated. They were randomly divided into treatment group (receiving vitamin D3) and control group (receiving placebo). The participants received two 50000 IU pearls of vitamin D3 or placebo at baseline and after 4 weeks.  Sleep quality, anxiety, depression, and physical morbidity of the participated students were evaluated by standardized questionnaires including Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory and Somatization subscale of Symptom Checklist-90 before receiving vitamin D3 and after 8 weeks. Data were analyzed using independent sample t-test, chi-square and mixed model analysis of variance in SPSS 20 software.

The mean ± SD age of students who participated in this study was 23.12 ± 1.20 years. The results of this study showed that vitamin D3 had statistically significant effects on improvement of anxiety (p=0.042), depression (p=0.001), and physical morbidity (p=0.0001) in university students in the treatment group in comparison with the placebo group after 8 weeks, but it did not have a significant effect (p=0.558) on students' sleep quality.

The vitamin D3 could have direct relationship to depression, anxiety, and physical morbidity in university students, but these results need further studies to confirm.