Abstract

Alotaibi, Alotaibi, AlAnazi, AlMahmoud, AlDosari, AlSuqair, AlAnazi, Hatrash, AlSuwaidan, Alnajjar

Background Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that occurs naturally in the body and has multiple roles from which the anti-inflammatory effect is included. This study investigated whether vitamin D relieves chronic pain and reduces analgesics use.
Methods This research is a randomized open label clinical trial. Oral vitamin-D was the intervention with a dose ranging from 2500-50000 IU; with or without analgesics in patients having chronic pain. Results were obtained based on the comparison between patients received vitamin D alone (VITD), analgesics alone (ANALG), and vitamin D with analgesics (VITDANA).
Results It has been observed that the average baseline of VASAL score in all arms was 5.65 with an average vitamin D level of 42.52 nmol/L. The average VASAL score of ANALG arm continued to be almost the same. While with other arms that reached normal serum vitamin D significantly (p < 0.01), VASAL score was significantly reduced in VITD and VITDANA arms (p < 0.001). The linear graph's AUC of VITD and VITDANA follow up were significantly (p<0.001) higher than the linear graph of ANALG follow up.
Conclusions This study confirmed that vitamin D has a role in pain relief. VASAL score showed a reliable measure for pain severity in patients suffering from chronic pain. Although several studies showed debating conclusions on vitamin D capacity in reducing pain, yet this study confirmed in a significant manner that vitamin D reduces pain severity in several body sites.