Vitamins and minerals account for around £200 million of the NHS prescribing budget in England and vitamin D is the most prescribed supplement.¹

Prescription Cost Analysis data suggests 27.8 million prescriptions for vitamins were dispensed in 2015. In addition, there were 2.2 million prescriptions for minerals, a further 361,000 prescriptions for compound vitamin and mineral preparations, and 108,000 health supplement prescriptions.

The cost of this is put at £139.7m for vitamins, £51.5m for minerals, and £2.67 million for compound vitamin/mineral formulations.

Despite this, the 8.4 million prescriptions for oral nutrition actually had a higher overall net ingredient cost (NIC) of £394 million. There were also an additional 169,000 prescriptions for foods, with an NIC of £11.0 million.

Vitamin D accounted for just short of 21 million items, with a NIC of £101m. The most significant B vitamin was thiamine (B1), but the prescribing of vitamin B compound meant individual prescriptions for riboflavin (B2), nicotinamide (B3) or other vitamin B preparations numbered fewer than 4,000 prescriptions each.

The figures also indicate there was much less likelihood of deficiencies in specific vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, magnesium, vitamin E, zinc or selenium, requiring targeted medical treatment.