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Diabetic Foot Ulcers and Vitamin D: A Literature Review

Antony Macido

Approximately 15% of patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) are prone to developing diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) in their lifetime (Leone, Pascale, Vitale, & Esposito, 2012). According to Armstrong, Boulton, and Bus (2017), DFU is the most frequent complication of the lower extremity associated with DM. The most common cause of lower extremity amputation in patients with DM is DFU (Ghanassia et al., 2008). Every half a minute someone in the world loses a lower extremity secondary to DM (Khatib & Tabatabaei-Malazy, 2007). Infected DFU is one of the common causes of hospitalization related to DM (Frykberg, Wittmayer, & Zgonis, 2007). The risk of mortality in five years in a patient with DM who also has DFU is 2.5 times higher than the five-year mortality risk in a patient with DM and no DFU (Armstrong et al., 2017). Evidence shows poor quality of life related to health in patients with DFU when compared to non-DM patients and DM patients without DFU (Ribu, Hanestad, Moum, Birkeland, & Rustoen, 2007).