23-05-2025
This Vitamin May Slow Aging Process—New Research
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New research suggests vitamin D may help slow biological aging by reducing telomeres shortening, a key marker of cellular aging.
Newsweek has reached out to some of the study's authors as well as other experts for comment via email on Friday.
Why It Matters
Chronological age is a straightforward measure of age—simply put, it's the number of years since a person was born. Unlike biological age, it does not account for health, lifestyle, genetics, epigenetics and environmental factors. Biological age can be determined by biomarkers, epigenetic alterations and physiological factors, among others.
In the scientific community, biological age can provide a more nuanced and accurate reflection of an individual's aging process because biological age does not increase at the same rate for everyone.
A person holding a multivitamin tablet on November 21, 2016.
A person holding a multivitamin tablet on November 21, 2016.
Charlotte Ball/PA Wire/AP Images
The study measures telomeres length, which are made from DNA sequences and proteins, and serve as a cap, protecting the end of chromosomes. They become slightly shorter every time the DNA is copied to produce new cells, so their length can be a useful indicator of cells' biological age.
What To Know
The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was part of a larger study conducted by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham and the Medical College of Georgia, the VITAL trial. It featured 25,871 participants. Specifically, the telomere portion focused on around 1,000 participants, consisting of women aged 55 years and older and males aged 50 and older.
The results found that those taking vitamin D supplements experienced significantly reduced telomere shortening than those taking the placebo, as measured at two-year intervals. They also found that taking omega-3 fatty acid supplementation did not have any strong effect on telomere length.
Telomeres shorten a little during each cell division, a natural part of aging and can be associated with an increased risk of various diseases. When the telomeres get very short, the cells stop dividing and die.
Researchers in the study concluded that vitamin D supplementation prevented the equivalent of nearly three years of aging in telomere terms.
However, Mary Armanios, a professor of oncology and director of the Telomere Center at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the research, told Scientific American that the health implications aren't as clear because "It's only at the extremes that telomere length really matters in terms of aging." She noted that the differences in lengths from the trial were within the normal range of human variation and also noted that the study's method of measuring telomere length can be very sensitive.
The majority of the study's participants were white, raising questions about diverse participant pools.
As of 2024, the Endocrine Society's vitamin D recommendations state, "In the general population ages 75 years and older, we suggest empiric vitamin D supplementation because of the potential to lower the risk of mortality."
What People Are Saying
Dr. Michael Holick, a specialist in vitamin D research at Boston University's Vitamin D, Skin, and Bone Research Laboratory, told Newsweek in an email: "This observation is very consistent with the observation that improvement in vitamin D status can reduce risk of mortality by as much as 90%."
JoAnn Manson, a co-author, principal investigator of VITAL, chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital said: "VITAL is the first large-scale and long-term randomized trial to show that vitamin D supplements protect telomeres and preserve telomere length. This is of particular interest because VITAL had also shown benefits of vitamin D in reducing inflammation and lowering risks of selected chronic diseases of aging, such as advanced cancer and autoimmune disease."
Haidong Zhu, first author of the report and a molecular geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University said: "Our findings suggest that targeted vitamin D supplementation may be a promising strategy to counter a biological aging process, although further research is warranted."
Purdue University Professor Majid Kazemian told Newsweek last year in an email: "Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with many diseases, and as a steroid hormone, vitamin D impacts many cellular processes, including anti-inflammation and anti-aging effects."
What Happens Next
The findings offer further insights into the aging process and telomeres preservation.
Further studies are needed to better understand how vitamin D affects telomere dynamics and cellular aging in more diverse populations.
