It's time for new rules on vitamin D food supplements

Vitamin D preparations are widely available as food supplements in most countries without the need of any medical prescription. We describe 3 cases of severe Vitamin D-intoxication, reported in the Italian National Institute of Health reporting system for natural health products. The cases reported share important similarities with other cases reported in literature, showing that vitamin D intoxication due to the use of food supplements is not a rare phenomenon. A major problem is that vitamin D preparations do not undergo specific quality control for good manufacturing practice due to the fact that they are labeled as "food supplements". The 3 cases reported, with capsules containing vitamin D doses 880 times higher than those declared could be considered the demonstration of the absence of appropriate quality control in product preparation. The present cases of vitamin D intoxication emphasize the need of marketing preparations produced under precise rules to define the amount of potentially toxic ingredients.