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Ersatz ‘Vitamin D’ Useless in Heart Health. So It’s Spun As ‘Vitamin D Has No Benefit.’

February 15, 2012 by admin in Pharmaceuticals with 0 Comments

Rather humorously, a pharmaceutical company failed in its attempt to prove its synthetic Vitamin D benefits people with heart disease—and failed so badly that they can’t spin it as a success. However, their junk science is being used to claim that Vitamin D is not beneficial in heart health—and that is nothing short of a lie.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), did not set out to determine whether Vitamin D is beneficial to heart health. It set out to determine if a drug called Zemplar that’s sold by Abbott Laboratories can increase heart muscle mass.

The study failed. However, the spin doctors are out in force telling the public that Vitamin D doesn’t benefit heart health, and ignoring that the drug Zemplar, which is not Vitamin D, provides no benefit.

Zemplar

Zemplar is a chemical analog of one form of Vitamin D—the unnatural type. In other words:

Zemplar is a copy of a copy of Vitamin D!

Zemplar’s chemical name is paricalcitol. It’s available only by prescription and is prescribed for overactivity of the parathyroid gland in people with kidney failure.

The type of Vitamin D that the body makes is D3. D2 (ergocalciferol) is a significantly inferior artificial copy of Vitamin D3. Paricalcitol is an analog of D2, not D3. Zemplar (paricalcitol) is a copy of D2. D2 is a copy of the real thing, D3 (cholecalciferol).

The chemical formulas of D3, D2, and paricalcitol are different from each other:

Cholecalciferol (D3, the real thing): C₂₇H₄₄O
Ergocalciferol (D2, the copy of the real thing): C₂₈H₄₄O
Paricalcitol (Zemplar, the copy of the copy): C₂₇H₄₄O₃

D2 has one more carbon atom than D3, and it has one more carbon atom and two fewer oxygen atoms than paricalcitol. Yet, paricalcitol is being called Vitamin D by the researchers and the media reporting on their study.

In fact, the tale is even worse: D2 is made by irradiating D3! So, the previous statement of Zemplar being a copy of a copy of Vitamin D doesn’t tell the whole story. The whole tale is:

Zemplar is a poor copy of an irradiated copy of Vitamin D!

It is, therefore, not the least surprising that the researchers found no heart benefit for their drug. Calling it Vitamin D does not make it Vitamin D. Paricalcitol is a drug, not a vitamin. (Technically, Vitamin D isn’t a true vitamin. The definition of a vitamin is a necessary nutrient that the body cannot manufacture itself. However, our bodies are able to manufacture all the Vitamin D we need.)

Study’s Stated Purpose and How It’s Spun

The study’s objective reads:

To determine the effects of an active vitamin D compound, paricalcitol, on left ventricular mass over 48 weeks …

Clearly, the purpose was to see if paricalcitol affects the muscle mass of the heart’s left ventrical. However, neither theHeart.org nor MedPage reports that the study’s focus was whether the chemical, paricalcitol, benefits the heart. They reported that Vitamin D does not benefit the heart, which is far from the truth. Here are the titles of their articles:

Even the title of the study itself was written to give an anti-Vitamin D spin:

Vitamin D Therapy and Cardiac Structure and Function in Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease

Since the desired result wasn’t obtained, the researchers, or more likely Abbott Labs, opted to use the study to give the false impression that Vitamin D provides no heart benefit.

This is what happens when Big Pharma makes artificial analogs to natural products. Though there’s a funny side to this story, the health of the people is the ultimate loser.