Influence of vitamin D supplementation on liver function tests, vitamin D levels and liver stiffness in patients with chronic liver diseases in an outpatient setting

Introduction: Patients with chronic liver disease are prone to vitamin D deficiency (< 20 ng/ml). It has been suggested from previous studies that patients with very low vitamin D levels may have an unfavorable outcome concerning antiviral treatment of chronic hepatitis C, presence of advanced disease and even mortality. Thus, we performed a retrospective cohort analysis investigating patients with low serum vitamin D concentrations and supplementation of vitamin D (group 1); patients with low levels of vitamin D and no supplements (group 2); and patients with normal vitamin D levels (group 3). Read-out measures…