BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Chronic pain is a frequent complaint during medical visits, especially among the elderly. In the attempt to find more effective therapies with less adverse effects in this population, especially considering elderly people with neuropathic and musculoskeletal pain, there are studies relating vitamin D to pain, which could propose it as an analgesic alternative. This study aimed at reviewing in the literature the role of vitamin D in chronic musculoskeletal pain in the elderly. CONTENTS: Pubmed, Medline, LILACS, Cochrane Library and Scielo databases were queried for the last ten years, looking for studies in Portuguese and English. Initial search keywords were "vitamin D" and "chronic pain", resulting in 220 articles, of which only those addressing musculoskeletal pain in the elderly were selected. From those, only ten met established criteria and were analyzed, resulting in: one systematic review, five transversal analytical studies, two case-series retrospective studies, one prospective observational study and one randomized and controlled clinical trial. Five studies have shown significant relationship between vitamin D deficit and chronic musculoskeletal pain; three studies have shown pain improvement after vitamin D supplementation and two have not observed pain improvement with such supplementation. CONCLUSION: Studies relating vitamin D to chronic pain in the elderly are still scarce and highly heterogeneous. The evaluation of vitamin D deficit should be more frequent during geriatric consultations, because this has been correlated to some painful syndromes and its correction could bring therapeutic benefits in some cases.
Chronic pain; Elderly; Musculoskeletal pain; Neuralgia; Vitamin D
