Efficacy and Safety of Vitamin D Supplementation for Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background: Vitamin D might be promising to serve as an adjunctive therapy for pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). However, the results remained controversial. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy and safety of vitamin D in patients with pulmonary TB. Methods: Medline, SCOPUS, Google Scholar, EMBASE, Springer, and Science Direct were searched electroni-cally from inception to Oct 2016. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) as-sessing the effect of vitamin D plus anti-tuberculosis treatment (ATT) versus placebo plus ATT on the treat-ment of pulmonary TB were included. Two investigators independently searched articles, extracted data, and assessed the quality of included studies. Data were analyzed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results: Five studies were included in this meta-analysis. Overall, compared with placebo intervention, vitamin D supplementation was found to have no significant effect on sputum smear negative conversion rates (RR=0.99; 95% CI=0.91 to 1.07; P=0.77), BMI (MD=0.11; 95% CI=-0.85 to 1.07; P=0.82) and ESR (MD=-2.29; 95% CI=-8.87 to 4.30; P=0.50). Conclusion: Vitamin D supplementation showed no influence on the improvement of sputum smear-negative conversion rates and BMI, as well as the decrease in ESR.