People with very low levels of vitamin D in their bodies may have an increased risk of death from all causes, including cancer and heart disease, a new study suggests.

Vitamin D is essential for healthy bones, but is present in very few foods. It is also known as the sunshine vitamin, because it is made in the body when ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight strike the skin, however concentrations vary worldwide due to different weather conditions.

While women and older people are more prone to low levels of the vitamin, until now, it has been unclear whether production of it has any effect on the risk of death. German scientists decided to look into this further.

They assessed data on over 26,000 patients from Europe and the US, who were aged between 50 and 79. The participants were followed up for 16 years, during which time, over 2,200 died from cancer and more than 2,600 died from heart disease.

The scientists found that overall, those with very low levels of vitamin D had ‘increased all-cause mortality'. They specifically found a link between those with the lowest levels of vitamin D in their bodies and deaths from cancer in people with a history of the disease, although no link was found in those who did not have any history of cancer.

However, a link was also found between low vitamin D levels and deaths from heart disease, whether there was a history of heart disease or not.

The scientists from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg insisted that these findings have ‘high public health relevance'.

They added that their results were consistent across countries, age groups, gender and the time of year that people were assessed.

Details of these findings are published in the British Medical Journal.

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