Vitamin K2 & Calcium Paper

Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine has published a new review paper examining calcium supplementation’s impact on bone and cardiovascular health, and the role Vitamin K2 plays in proper calcium utilization. The review paper is the result of a grant from the Norwegian Research Council awarded to NattoPharma to fund a 4-year PhD project to document the effect of calcium metabolism in the body based on the presence or absence of vitamin K2, MK-7, where ex-NattoPharma has provided MenaQ7® Vitamin K2 as MK-7 for research conducted at the University of Maastricht, led by Professor Leon Schurgers.*

According to the authors, the paper “The bone-vasculature axis: calcium supplementation and the role of vitamin K”, provides an update on current literature on calcium supplementation among post-menopausal women and chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients and discusses underlying molecular mechanisms of vascular calcification. Prof. Schurgers states that therapeutic strategies with vitamin K2 treatment should be considered to prevent or hold progression of vascular calcification as a consequence of excessive calcium intake.

“The work conducted in collaboration with ex-NattoPharma under the Norwegian Research Council grant will provide further evidence that calcium without adequate vitamin K2 consumption might end up in the soft tissues where it is not wanted, rather than in the bone matrix, where it is needed,” says Prof. Schurgers, Professor of Biochemistry of Vascular Calcification and Vice Chair of Biochemistry at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), Maastricht University; and senior author and leader of the research project. “In a recent study by Bolland et al., it was shown that calcium supplementation of postmenopausal women was associated with a beneficial effect on bone, but also with increased myocardial infarction, suggesting detrimental effects on the vascular system possibly by inducing increased vascular calcification. As calcium supplementation is needed for bone, the precipitation in the vessel wall needs to be inhibited.”