Previous studies have shown a link between low vitamin D status and heart disease. Now a new study shows that patients with high blood pressure who possess a gene variant that affects an enzyme critical to normal vitamin D activation are twice as likely as those without the variant to have congestive heart failure.
“This study is the first indication of a genetic link between vitamin D action and heart disease,” says Robert U. Simpson, professor of pharmacology at the University of Michigan Medical School and one of the authors of the study in the journal Pharmacogenomics.
