The authors, MS Sandhu and TB Casele, point out that evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency is associated with lung airway over-responsiveness, worse asthma control, and possibly resistance of asthma patients being able to respond to steroid treatment.

They point out that the cells in the lung show high amounts of the enzyme necessary to convert vitamin D to the activated vitamin D within the lung.

This activated vitamin D has been shown to inhibit the manufacture of certain molecules that promote inflammation in the lung. Therefore having sufficient vitamin D would contribute to less lung inflammation, which is the cause of asthma.

They also point out that vitamin D in the lung helps manufacture several natural anti-infective molecules that can help prevent infections, like bronchitis.
The authors made the hypothesis that vitamin D supplementation may lead to improved asthma control, and indeed that is exactly what I see in my practice. All of my patients with asthma have their vitamin D levels optimized.

If you or your family has problems with asthma, including childhood asthma please be sure your vitamin D levels are optimized.

Please let me know if you found vitamin D to be helpful with asthma in you or your family? Do you take it on a regular basis? Do you get your blood levels checked occasionally?

I look forward to hearing from you.

REFERENCE

What I basically said is that the medical literature supports the possibility that vitamin D deficiency is connected with depression but more studies need to be done to prove the connection.

Now in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology a new article has been published,entitled "Vitamin D, light, and mental health". The author is MB Humble.

In this article the author reviews the medical literature for relationship between vitamin D and mental health. He points out that both vitamin D receptors and vitamin D enzymes are present in the brain. He also points out that active vitamin D affects neurotransmitters and other molecules that are relevant to mental disorders.

He points out that considerable evidence supports a role of less than optimal vitamin D levels being associated with depression. However he quickly points out that further double-blind crossover placebo controlled prospective studies must be done to prove this connection.

He goes on to point out that specifically two diagnoses, schizophrenia and autism has been linked to prenatal vitamin D deficiency.as my readers know I've discussed this previously.

The author also goes on to present two cases of psychiatric improvement coinciding with treatment of their vitamin D deficiency, leading to the question of whether their vitamin D deficiency was the cause of their psychiatric disorder.

We increasingly see articles like this in the medical literature.

Please let me know if you have seen any improvement in your or your families mental health as a result of optimizing your vitamin D levels. Have you had your levels checked? Have your friends with depression or other mental disorders had their levels checked?

I look forward to hearing back from you.

REFERENCE

The exact details on the why and why not this vitamin D optimization of patients with these diseases is not discussed in detail in the medical literature.

Now a new study has come out that shows that vitamin D actually appears to HELP patients with two specific types of lymphoma.

In a significant paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that was just published online, Matthew Drake, MD and his colleagues from the Mayo Clinic and 2 other schools  tested the theory that vitamin D levels might be predictive of "event free survival" (EFS), and "overall survival" (OS) in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL). An "event" would be getting so sick the patient would need intervention most likely in a hospital. Otherwise, these terms are self-explanatory.
In the study they looked at over 900 newly diagnosed patients with NHL. 44% of the patients had an insufficient vitamin D level- that was less than 25 ng/ml, measured  within 120 days of their diagnosis. The average patient was followed for almost 3 years, some longer and others shorter.

After adjusting for other factors and treatment, the vitamin D insufficient patients who had defuse large B-cell lymphoma had a 41% lower chance of having event free survival. In addition, this group had a 50% lower likelihood of overall survival in the time they were followed.

Similarly patients with T cell lymphomas also had a significantly shorter event free survival time and a significantly shorter overall survival.

The authors went on to state that it was not clear if normalizing the vitamin D levels in these patients would improve outcome and suggest that more studies of this sort need to be done to find that out.

In my own practice of medicine if I see a patient with one of these types of lymphomas now, I will certainly optimize their vitamin D levels as soon as I start working with them.

The authors were quoted as saying "At this time, there is no definitive evidence for a causative relationship between lower vitamin D levels and poorer outcomes in lymphoma, and our study did not answer the question of whether normalizing vitamin D levels in these patients improves outcome."

This is just one more example where higher vitamin D levels were associated with patients doing better. I look forward to more and more of these studies as vitamin D is not on the researchers map!

Do you have friends or family with one of these types of lymphoma? Have they had their vitamin D levels checked? Let me know what you are doing to help spread the word about vitamin D.

REFERENCE