Meta-analysis Confirms K2’s Role in Prevention, Treatment of Osteoporosis for Postmenopausal Women
Researchers sought to identify the role of Vitamin K2 for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, and conducted a meta-analysis of 19 randomized controlled trials. The prestigious Osteoporosis International published the results, which showed that Vitamin K2 might play a role in maintaining the bone mineral density (BMD) and in reducing the incidence of fractures for postmenopausal women with osteoporosis.
After searching the Cochrane Library, Pub Med, EMBASE, and ISI web of knowledge (until December 1, 2013) and reference lists of eligible articles, Huang and colleagues then performed a meta-analysis of all-including randomized controlled trials.
“Vitamin K2 has been revealed to be effective in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in Japan, which was not confirmed in Western countries,” the researchers stated. “Thus, we conduct this meta-analysis to verify the hypothesis that Vitamin K2 plays a role in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis for postmenopausal women.”
Nineteen randomized controlled trials encompassing 6,759 participants have met the inclusion criteria. Subgroup analysis of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis revealed a significant improvement of vertebral BMD for both medium-term and long-term results favoring vitamin K2 group (p < 0.00001 and p = 0.0005). However, no significant difference in BMD changes was revealed for the non-osteoporosis subgroup analysis. As for the incidence of fractures, pooled analysis of the seven related studies demonstrated no significant difference in the incidence of fractures favoring vitamin K2 (RR = 0.63, p = 0.08). However, sensitivity analysis by rejecting the study inducing heterogeneity demonstrated a significant difference in the incidence of fractures favoring vitamin K2 (RR = 0.50, p = 0.0005). Significant differences were found in undercarboxylated osteocalcin reduction and osteocalcin increment. The result of adverse reaction analysis showed that Vitamin K2 group seemed to have a higher adverse reaction rate (RR = 1.22, p = 0.06).
“This meta-analysis seemed to support the hypothesis that Vitamin K2 plays kind of a role in the maintenance and improvement of vertebral BMD and the prevention of fractures in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. The reduction of undercarboxylated osteocalcin and increment of osteocalcin may have some relation to the process of bone mineralization,” the researchers stated, noting that the effect of Vitamin K2 for postmenopausal women without osteoporosis had not been identified. “Further high-quality RCTs with large sample size are needed to confirm the role of vitamin K2 in osteoporosis for postmenopausal women.”
Reference: Huang ZB, Wan SL, Lu YJ, Ning L, Liu C, Fan SW. Does vitamin K2 play a role in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis for postmenopausal women: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Osteoporos Int. 2014 Dec 17. [Epub ahead of print]