This original research was presented by Dr.Jothydev Kesavadev and team at the 25th Annual Meeting of American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists(AACE) in May at Orlando, Florida, USA.

There is a dearth of long term follow-up data from India on vitamin D status in diabetes patients and effect of vitamin D status on glycemic control.We followed up 2134 diabetes patients presenting at our centers for an year (34% female; age in years M:53.1, SD: 11.8). Vitamin D status was similar amongst male & female patients, with overall 60% deficient (<20ng/ml), 27% low(21-30ng/ml) and 12% normal (30-80 ng/ml). Patients were given comprehensive treatment for diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, vitamin D deficiency, etc. as applicable, with telemedicine-based diabetes care. 599 patients visited the clinic again within a year.

At the second visit, only 23% were vitamin D deficient and 45% had normal values. Average HbA1c was 7.7+/-1.8 at first visit and 7.1+/- 1.5 at second visit. A multilinear regression with HbA1c as outcome and age, sex, insulin use, BMI, and vitamin D status (deficient, low, normal) as predictors showed statistically significant effect of final vitamin D status on final HbA1c level (β=-0.12, se=0.06,p=0.04). Vitamin D status may be optimised for better glycemic control and further well-designed studies are needed to elucidate the level of effect.