Vitamin D supplements may help people with diseased hearts, a study suggests. A trial on 163 heart failure patients found supplements of the vitamin, which is made in the skin when exposed to sunlight, improved their hearts' ability to pump blood around the body. The Leeds Teaching Hospitals team, who presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, described the results as "stunning". The British Heart Foundation called for longer trials to assess the pills. Vitamin D is vital for healthy bones and teeth and may have important health benefits throughout the body but many people are deficient. The average age of people in the study was 70 and, like many people that age, they had low levels of vitamin D even in summer. "They do spend less time outside, but the skin's ability to manufacture vitamin D also gets less effective [with age] and we don't really understand why that is," said consultant cardiologist Dr Klaus Witte.
