TY - JOUR T1 - Vitamin D as a supplementary agent in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 42 IS - Suppl 57 SP - 4623 AU - Haris Riaz AU - Irbaz Riaz AU - Tanvir Abir AU - Maaz Badshah AU - Abul Milton Y1 - 2013/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/42/Suppl_57/4623.abstract N2 - Background: The objective of the present systematic review is to conducting a meta-analysis of the available RCT’s to determine whether Vitamin D is effective as a supplementary agent in TB.Methods: PubMed and Cochrane database were searched from the inception of these databases to date. Two authors independently evaluated quality of each study using the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias. For binary outcome data (mortality), we extracted number of subjects in each category and estimated relative risk. For continuous outcome data (BMI and body weight increase), mean and standard deviation for each experimental group were extracted to estimate standardized mean differences.Results: A total of 584 patients with active pulmonary TB receiving vitamin D as a supplementary agent along with standard anti-tuberculous regimen were included in the 4 trials with different doses of vitamin D ranging from 1000 IU/day to 100,000 IU at different intervals. Our study did not show any improvement in clinical parameters (mortality, sputum smear positivity, and sputum culture positivity) of vitamin D administration compared to placebo in tuberculosis patients (p = 0.05).Conclusions: The present meta-analysis did not show any improvement in the clinically relevant parameters of patients with tuberculosis receiving vitamin D supplementation. ER -