About colecalciferol

Colecalciferol is a form of vitamin D. It helps your body to take in more calcium and phosphorus from the food you eat, and helps your kidneys to keep more calcium instead of peeing it out.

We usually get our vitamin D through exposure to sunlight and our diet. Not having enough vitamin D in your body can lead to bone conditions such as rickets and osteomalacia in children, and osteoporosis (thinning of the bones) in adults.

Long-term vitamin D deficiency can cause bone loss, muscle weakness, falls and fractures in older people.

Everyone can benefit from taking colecalciferol as a daily vitamin D supplement. Adults who are not at risk of vitamin D deficiency should consider taking a daily supplement of 10 micrograms (mcg) of vitamin D during autumn and winter.

Adults who are at risk of vitamin D deficiency should take a daily supplement of 10 micrograms of vitamin D, throughout the year.

It is recommended that you take vitamin D if you have a deficiency, or to prevent a deficiency if you:

• are not often outdoors, for example if you're housebound or in an institution, like a care home
• are pregnant or breastfeeding
• usually wear clothes that cover up most of your skin when you're outside
• have dark skin – darker skin may not make enough vitamin D from sunlight
• are 1 to 4 years old or a baby that is breastfed or having less than 500ml of infant formula a day

Vitamin D deficiency is the most common cause of rickets so if your child has low vitamin D levels, your doctor may prescribe colecalciferol for them.

To find out if you have low vitamin D levels, your doctor will give you a blood test. If your levels are severely low, they may prescribe a loading dose course of vitamin D. This is a high strength dose that is only available on prescription.

If your vitamin D levels are OK, or you want to prevent deficiency, you can buy lower dose colecalciferol from pharmacies and shops.

Colecalciferol comes as chewable, dissolvable (soluble) and melt-in-the-mouth (orodispersible) tablets, capsules, a syrup, and oral drops.

There is also a type of vitamin D called calcipotriol, which sounds similar to colecalciferol. Calcipotriol is used to treat the skin condition caused by plaque psoriasis.