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Vitamin D could help fight hepatitis CA new study has found that administering vitamin D to hepatitis C patients dramatically reduces the presence of the virus in the blood.The study, carried out at Rebecca Sieff Hospital in Safed and Hillel Yaffeh Medical Center in Hadera by Dr. Assy Nimer and Dr. Saif Abu-Mouch covered 90 hepatitis C patients.The findings were presented in late November at a conference of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.For six months, in addition to the standard treatment, which included Interferon once a week and a daily dose of the antiviral drug Ribavirin, 30 patients were also treated with 1,000 units of vitamin D a day. A control group of 60 patients went without the vitamin.In order to assess the impact of vitamin D on the treatment of the disease, before starting the study, all patients, including those from the control group and those who were found to have a vitamin D deficiency, were given supplements, so that all participants began the study from the same point.A month after the start of treatment, the virus had disappeared from the blood in 44 percent of the group receiving vitamin D supplements, as opposed to just 18 percent among the control group.After three months, the success rate for the group getting the supplement rose to 96 percent, compared to 48 percent in the control group.Other findings from the study, which will be presented next month in Kfar Blum at a conference of the Israeli Association for the Study of the Liver, indicate that this trend continues even after the end of drug treatment.The initial results show that six months after the end of treatment, 90 percent of patients treated with drug therapy and vitamin D supplements had the virus disappear and completely recovered."The drug treatment for hepatitis C patients is usually administered for around a year, and occasionally the virus disappears from the blood, but remains in other places, for example, in the liver and lymph glands," explained Nimer, the director of the Liver Disease Unit at Rebecca Sieff Hospital. "At the end of the treatment, the virus may return to the blood, but we found that in patients who were also given the vitamin D supplement, the virus did not return, that is, it was excreted by the body."How vitamin D helps improve the condition of hepatitis patients is not entirely clear. However, according to Nimer, "It has already been proven that vitamin D benefits the immune system by increasing the activity of T cells [white blood cells that help in the fight against pathogens], improves the body's reaction to the insulin hormone, and reduces the level of pro-inflammatory proteins that cause liver infections caused by viruses."...
As a boy in the thirties suffering fro asthma I used to visit Great Ormond street hospital to be irradiated with UV presumably to create vitamin D.I cannot recall if it did any good.
Vitamin D controls T cell antigen receptor signaling and activation of human T cellsAbstractPhospholipase C (PLC) isozymes are key signaling proteins downstream of many extracellular stimuli. Here we show that naive human T cells had very low expression of PLC-γ1 and that this correlated with low T cell antigen receptor (TCR) responsiveness in naive T cells. However, TCR triggering led to an upregulation of ~75-fold in PLC-γ1 expression, which correlated with greater TCR responsiveness. Induction of PLC-γ1 was dependent on vitamin D and expression of the vitamin D receptor (VDR). Naive T cells did not express VDR, but VDR expression was induced by TCR signaling via the alternative mitogen-activated protein kinase p38 pathway. Thus, initial TCR signaling via p38 leads to successive induction of VDR and PLC-γ1, which are required for subsequent classical TCR signaling and T cell activation.
"We have discovered that the first stage in the activation of a T cell involves vitamin D, explains Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology. When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it has an immediate biochemical reaction and extends a signaling device or ‘antenna' known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it search for vitamin D. This means that the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won't even begin to mobilise."
Get out in that frosty morning sunshine...!
Try looking at this site http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/study-vitamin-kills-cancer-cells/story?id=9904415
Quote from: alanan on 12/03/2010 05:56:48Try looking at this site http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/study-vitamin-kills-cancer-cells/story?id=9904415Exciting and quite promising, alanan......nevertheless: "In Tests, Vitamin D Shrinks Breast Cancer Cells.Results Encouraging, But Don't Read Too Much Into Them, Says Dr. Richard Besser".There is something new about vitamin D and influenza viruses...a bit closer to the title of this very thread:Randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation to prevent seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren.Urashima M, Segawa T, Okazaki M, Kurihara M, Wada Y, Ida H.Division of Molecular Epidemiology Jikei University School of Medicine Minato-ku Tokyo Japan.BACKGROUND: To our knowledge, no rigorously designed clinical trials have evaluated the relation between vitamin D and physician-diagnosed seasonal influenza.OBJECTIVE: We investigated the effect of vitamin D supplements on the incidence of seasonal influenza A in schoolchildren.DESIGN: From December 2008 through March 2009, we conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial comparing vitamin D(3) supplements (1200 IU/d) with placebo in schoolchildren. The primary outcome was the incidence of influenza A, diagnosed with influenza antigen testing with a nasopharyngeal swab specimen.RESULTS: Influenza A occurred in 18 of 167 (10.8%) children in the vitamin D(3) group compared with 31 of 167 (18.6%) children in the placebo group [relative risk (RR), 0.58; 95% CI: 0.34, 0.99; P = 0.04]. The reduction in influenza A was more prominent in children who had not been taking other vitamin D supplements (RR: 0.36; 95% CI: 0.17, 0.79; P = 0.006) and who started nursery school after age 3 y (RR: 0.36; 95% CI: 0.17, 0.78; P = 0.005). In children with a previous diagnosis of asthma, asthma attacks as a secondary outcome occurred in 2 children receiving vitamin D(3) compared with 12 children receiving placebo (RR: 0.17; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.73; P = 0.006).CONCLUSION: This study suggests that vitamin D(3) supplementation during the winter may reduce the incidence of influenza A, especially in specific subgroups of schoolchildren.This trial was registered at https://center.umin.ac.jp as UMIN000001373.Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar 10. [Epub ahead of print]
So, it does as good a job as chocolate cake.For those people who are poorly nourished, improving their diet improves their health.Not exactly rocket science and not evidence for vitamin D killing the virus.