Posted on 01/04/2011 6:27:35 AM PST by decimon
CINCINNATI—A new study shows that vitamin D deficiency could be linked to the development and severity of certain autoimmune lung diseases.
These findings are being reported in the Jan. 4 edition of the journal Chest.
Brent Kinder, MD, UC Health pulmonologist, director of the Interstitial Lung Disease Center at the University of Cincinnati and lead investigator on the study, says vitamin D deficiencies have been found to affect the development of other autoimmune diseases, like lupus and type 1 diabetes.
"We wanted to see if lack of sufficient vitamin D would also be seen in patients who are diagnosed with an autoimmune interstitial lung disease (ILD) and whether it was associated with reduced lung function," he says.
Some ILD patients first discover they have an undifferentiated connective tissue disease, a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects multiple organ systems but is not developed enough for physicians to easily recognize and categorize.
Autoimmune diseases occur when the body produces abnormal cells that turn on the body and attack major organs and tissues. Connective tissue diseases include lupus, scleroderma, polymyositis, vasculitis, rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren's syndrome.
"ILD is a group of diseases that mainly affect the tissues of the lungs instead of the airways, like asthma and emphysema do," says Kinder. "It causes scarring of the lungs, is more difficult to diagnosis and treat than other kinds of lung diseases and is often fatal.
"Since vitamin D deficiency has implications for other manifestations of autoimmune illnesses, we wanted to see it had an effect on the lungs of this patient population."
Researchers evaluated 118 patients from the UC ILD Center database—67 with connective tissue disease-related ILD and 51 with other causes of lung fibrosis—for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, which indicate levels of vitamin D in the body. Then, they evaluated associations between these serum levels and the patients' conditions.
Overall, those with connective tissue disease-related ILD were more likely to have vitamin D deficiency—52 percent versus 20 percent—and insufficiency—79 percent versus 31 percent—than other forms of ILD.
Among this same group of patients, reduced serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels were strongly associated with reduced lung function.
"These findings suggest that there is a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in patients with ILD, particularly those with connective tissue disease," Kinder says. "Therefore, vitamin D may have a role in the development of connective tissue disease-related ILD and patients' worsening lung function.
"One of the next steps is to see if supplementation will improve lung function for these patients."
He adds that if these findings are confirmed and vitamin D supplementation is shown to be effective in clinical trials, this may also provide a more natural, inexpensive treatment for the illness.
"Vitamin D is known to be a critical dietary factor for bone and skin health," he says. "Now, we're learning that it could potentially be modified as a treatment to improve ILD as opposed to other, more toxic therapies."
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This study was funded by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Research Loan Repayment Grant and a K23 award from the NIH.
Ping
Waiting for the Go-out-in-the-sun-even-if-you-live-at-the-North-pole crowd to show up!
/sarcasm...
wont be long before the Obama Care people feel the need to regulate Vit D....apparently it works, which is the first big no no.
Yes, watch out for the panacea crowd and for the Side Effect problems to be ignored.
Your body uses Vitamin D all the time.
Your body can make Vitamin D in the sunlight, but ONLY if the sun is 60 degrees or more above the horizon, which is for all practical purposes, directly overhead.
Of you can, please point me at the websites that have documented cases of Vitamin D overdose.
Thanks!
Doing a searches for vitamin D indicates vitamin D deficiency is rampant and vitamin D overdose is very rare.
“Acute overdose requires between 15,000 µg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 µg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over a period of several days to months, with a safe intake level being 250 µg/d (10,000 IU per day).”
That's what really sold me on supplementation. For most of the year there is little to no opportunity to make vitamin D from sunlight. And when the opportunity is there is when we most try to avoid direct sunlight.
I have MS, and when vitamin D deficiency first surfaced as an issue in MS research (a few years ago) I was tested. I was severely deficient...took 50,000 units once a week for awhile.
I still take it on a regular basis. But I grew up in a very sunny climate, spent vacations at the beach every summer, , lived in FL most of my life (with the exception of a few years living on a caribbean island and a few years in NC), and still was afflicted w/MS.
So my question about vitamin D is a horse/cart thing. Did I have vitamin D deficiency and that led to the MS...or do I have vitamin D deficiency because I have MS and heat sensitivity and rarely go in the sun anymore.
Do people with an illness (they mention connective tissue disorders which can cause pain and would limit your activities) just naturally spend less time outdoors and thus develop vitamin D deficiency?
‘Tis a puzzlement!
Vitamin D ping!
I investigated this a few years back.
There are many thousands of websites that talk about Vitamin D overdose. But probably fewer that one in a hundred of these have details of actual cases of anybody suffering from it!
Plus, your body can and does store it in the fatty tissues if you get more than you need, it has a half life of somewhere between 30-45 days.
A couple times a week, I take 10-16 thousand units, whether or not I’ve gotten any sun exposure.
The risk of NOT GETTING enough is far higher than the risk of getting too much. And it does not surprise me at all that two of the biggies (colon cancer and heart disease) are far more prevalent these days since all of the “stay out of the sun” hoopla has been the rage.
Everyone has to decide for themselves, but personally, unless somebody lives in the tropics, I would bet there is a very high probability that they are deficient.
Did you use any type of sun block when out in the sun all those years?
That sounds like someone could only get half pregnant ..... Exposure is Exposure unless someone is referring to the Heat of the sun creating Vity D then i might buy the Quote of 60* above.
Vitamin D ping. Interesting read.
Heck no...sunblock was against my religion, LOL. This was years ago before sunblock was even thought of. We slathered on stuff to make us tan more evenly, but it didn’t have any UV blockers in it. Our cure for sunburn was Noxema, LOL.
It’s a wonder I don’t have skin cancer because I would be a perfect candidate. I used to burn till I blistered when I was a kid/teenager. In addition to living in Florida our family spent a weeks on vacation at the beach each summer.
First MS symptoms showed up in college, so I was getting plenty of sun to that time. Of course once MS showed up, I found that my tolerance for heat was greatly reduced.
To me, verily.
The last thing I read about MS and vitamin D was of some study in Canada. No correlation was found. But your cart/horse thing occurred to me with that reading. If I had it right then the researchers found no curative effect of vitamin D for MS but that says nothing about a possible preventative effect.
And that was but a single study so I don't know where the issue stands.
It requires UVB radiation to make Vitamin D.
UVB is a short-wavelength ultraviolet. It doesn’t even make it to the ground if the sun is low in the sky. None of it.
A person say in Alaska could sit in the sun the entire day and make NO Vitamin D at all.
I don’t make this chit up...
For an excellent, informative and entertaining video on Vitamin D research done by Dr. Michael Holick, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1t9WqOD-0
It will make you run out and get that Vitamin D supplement like I did!
LOL, yep, everyone knows Noxema was the best cure for sunburn! I’ve lived in FL my whole life, mom tried to slather me up with sunscreen, but I’d just run and jump in the water and rub it all off. :) I never blistered boy have I had some bad bad burns, and I’ve already had a pre-cancer spot removed from my back.
Apparently not. The story is that Earth's atmosphere filters out the UVB rays when the Sun is low in the sky. No UVB, no vitamin D.
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