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A meta-analysis of the effects of vitamin D supplementation on endocrine metabolic and inflammatory markers in patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

  • 2026-01-02
  • Medicine 105(1)
    • Baohua Wu
    • Jun Yao

Study Design

Type
Meta-Analysis
Population
PCOS patients
Methods
meta-analysis of data from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library; two researchers independently screened retrieved literature, extracted data, and performed meta-analysis with Review Manager 5.4

Background

To evaluate the effects of vitamin D on the endocrine, metabolic, and inflammatory markers providing new PCOS treatment ideas.

Methods

PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library were systematically searched for vitamin D treatment studies in PCOS patients from establishment to 12/2022 using vitamin D, polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, etc, as search terms. Two researchers independently screened the retrieved literature, extracted the data, and finally performed a meta-analysis of these data with Review Manager 5.4 software to calculate all-parameter weighted mean difference (WMDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using a fixed-effects or random-effect models.

Results

The 10 included articles mainly studied the effects of vitamin D and placebo control treatment on endocrine, metabolic and inflammatory indicators in PCOS patients. Meta-analysis results showed that compared to placebo, vitamin D reduces the homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR) (MD = -0.47; 95% CI: -0.66 to -0.28; P < .00001), fasting serum insulin (FBI) (MD = -1.25; 95% CI: -2.44 to -0.06; P = .04), hypersensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) (MD = -1.18; 95% CI: -2.13 to -0.24; P = .01) and total testosterone (TT) (MD = -0.33; 95% CI: -0.58 to -0.08; P = .009) level. However, there were no significant differences in the other endocrine or metabolic indicators (P > .05).

Conclusion

Current evidence indicates that vitamin D supplementation significantly reduced the HOMA-IR, hs-CRP, FBI, and TT in PCOS patients. However, fasting blood glucose (FPG), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), free androgen index (FAI), sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were unaffected.

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