Vitamin D Supplementation improves depressive symptoms in patients with chronic liver disease

Introduction: Patients with chronic liver diseases (CLD) regularly suffer from vitamin D deficiency and depression. A recent meta-analysis reported an inverse correlation between depression and vitamin D levels. Indeed, vitamin D receptor (VDR) is present and genomic and nongenomic VDR-mediated signalling has been described in brain. This intervention study investigates whether vitamin D therapy ameliorates depressive symptoms in CLD patients. Methods: Overall, 101 patients with viral and nonviral CLD (median age 55 years, female: male ratio 1:1, 36% chronic hepatitis C) were assessed for depression using the BD…