Vitamin D Deficiency Is a Predictor of Mortality in Elderly with Chronic Heart Failure.

Context: The prevalence of both heart failure and vitamin D deficiency increases with age and is associated with poor outcome in the elderly.

Objectives: We aimed to investigate the relationship between all-cause mortality and vitamin D deficiency in elderly patients with chronic heart failure.

Design: It is a retrospective, observational cross-sectional study. Median follow-up time was 497 days.

Subjects and methods: 302 patients aged ≥65 years heart failure patients was categorized into tertiles based on the 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels. Clinical and laboratory parameters were evaluated according to tertiles. Hospitalization rates and overall survival were compared between tertiles. Independent predictors of all cause mortality were defined.

Results: Patients with low vitamin D tertile were mostly women (p=0.001), and had a worse NYHA functional class (p=0.005). During follow-up, deaths were more frequent in the first tertile (p = 0.001). All-cause mortality increased significantly with decreasing vitamin D tertiles (from third tertile 7.9%, to 11.9%, to 26%; log rank test p=0.003). No significant difference was observed at the composite endpoint of mortality or HF hospitalizations (P=0.451). Multivariate analysis supported that low vitamin D concentration was an independent predictor of all causes of mortality (HR 0.93; 95% CI 0.89-0.97; p=0.004).

Conclusions: Low vitamin D levels were independent predictors of all-cause mortality in the elderly population with chronic heart failure.