brubolt's posterous

This month’s Mayo Clinic Proceedings have two important articles about vitamin D deficiency and chronic pain. Both the lead article and the lead editorial discuss the association of vitamin D deficiency and chronic pain. For reasons that are not clear, neither article has yet been posted to PubMed by the National Library of Medicine, nor reported in the media.
Dr. Plotnikoff, of the University of Minnesota Medical School, measured calcidiol [25(OH)D] levels on 150 patients who presented to an outpatient university clinic with nonspecific musculoskeletal pain. They discovered that 100% of the Black, Hispanic, East African and American Indian patients with chronic pain were vitamin D deficient. 93% of all the patients were vitamin D deficient with young women in their childbearing years being at the greatest risk for misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. Dr. Plotnikoff (along with co-author, Ms. Quigley) recommended that screening calcidiol [25(OH)D] levels become standard practice is all such clinics. (Plotnikoff, GA and Quigley BA; Prevalence of Severe Hypovitaminosis D in Patients With Persistent, Nonspecific Musculoskeletal Pain; Mayo Clin Proc. 2003:78:1463-1470

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