Abstract

It is suggested that vitamin D status is associated with androgenic profie in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Although several clinical trials are known in this regard, the results were inconsistent. Therefore, this study was aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of published clinical trials to elucidate the possible effct of vitamin D supplementation on the androgen levels in adult females with PCOS. PubMed, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar were searched to identify related articles published up to January 2017. Mean ± standard deviation (SD) of changes in serum total testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), and free testosterone were extracted to calculate Hedges’ g to be used as effct size for meta-analysis. DerSimonian and Liard random effcts model was incorporated to summarize the effcts. Six clinical trials with 183 participants aged 18–41 years with follow-up period between 3–24 weeks were included. Our analysis revealed that vitamin D supplementation signifiantly reduces total testosterone (Hedges’ g = − 0.32, 95 CI: − 0.55 to − 0.10; p = 0.005); this effct remained signifiant in single group trials after subgroup analysis. Vitamin D supplementation did not affct serum free testosterone (Hedges’ g = − 0.21, 95 CI: − 0.44 to 0.079; p = 0.08) or SHBG levels (Hedges’ g = 0, 95 CI, 0.22–0.22; p = 0.98). The present systematic review and meta-analysis revealed that vitamin D supplementation might signifiantly affct serum total testosterone while it is not effctive in improving other markers of androgenic profile. Future double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials are highly recommended.