There was no reason for the patients to receive vitamin D tests. They did not have osteoporosis; their bones were not cracking from a lack of the vitamin. They did not have diseases that interfere with vitamin D absorption.
Yet in a recent sample of 800,000 patients in Maine, nearly one in five had had at least one test for blood levels of the vitamin over a three-year period. More than a third got two or more tests, often to evaluate such ill-defined complaints as malaise or fatigue.
The researchers who gathered the data, Dr. Kathleen Fairfield and Kim Murray of the Maine Medical Center, were surprised. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been.
