Would people with schizophrenia benefit from taking vitamin D supplements?
I do not believe that hypovitaminosis D during adult life increases the risk of developing the disorder, nor do I think that people with established schizophrenia would have improved mental state if their vitamin D levels were optimized. However, many patients with schizophrenia have poor nutrition anyway, and may also have low vitamin D. While it may not help their mental state, it may help other health outcomes (reduced risk of osteoporosis, reduced risk of various types of cancer, etc.). Why do you think there was no association found in females? I think that this is a feature of the low power of this study. Thus, the finding is INCONCLUSIVE, rather than negative. Schizophrenia comes on later in women, and thus the members of the cohort have not gone through enough of their period of risk in order to develop the illness. The study was driven by a directional, a priori hypothesis, and has a reasonable degree of biological plausibility. However, the findings are very ‘fragile’ due to
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