This might be surprising for some: while vitamin D might often be thought of as potential relief for those who suffer from arthritis in the knees, a new study has found that a supplement of the sunshine vitamin might not reduce pain levels at all.
According to UPI, the study was conducted as a means of figuring out how doctors might combat osteoarthritis, a progressive disease that results in loss of cartilage in the knees. Along with this comes, you guessed it: chronic pain.
Clearly, this type of ailment is distressing and doctors have been trying to take a crack at relieving its more severe symptoms for a long while now. The use of vitamin D supplements to help reduce the pain levels in osteoarthritis sufferers is already controversial, but doctors deem a remedy necessary. Osteoarthritis can get so bad that it ends up requiring knee replacement surgery, says the team of Australian researchers behind the study.
“These data suggest a lack of evidence to support vitamin D supplementation for slowing disease progression or structural change in knee osteoarthritis,” said lead researcher Dr. Changhai Ding, a professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart.
Previous studies have lead to conflicting results, but the Australian research team in question hoped to find a conclusive answer to the validity of the use of vitamin D.
During random testing, it was found that vitamin D failed to have any beneficial effect on osteoarthritis sufferers.
However, that’s not to say that vitamin D has no benefits at all.
“That’s not to say that vitamin D doesn’t play a role in other aspects of bone health — because it does,” Roth said.