Health & Medicine - Posted by Courtney Karayannis-Monash on Monday, May 7, 2012 16:00 - 3 Comments 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Low vitamin D worsens lupus severity
Avoiding the sun is important for lupus patients because sunlight can make aspects of the disease worse. However, a vitamin D deficiency may also increase the disease's severity. (Credit: "hand to sun" image via Shutterstock)
MONASH (AUS) — People with lupus experience more severe symptoms if their vitamin D levels are low, a new study shows.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
The new research also finds that, due to environmental, genetic, and cultural factors which contribute to vitamin D deficiency, Australians are more susceptible to the disease.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) affects more than five million people worldwide. Symptoms may include bouts of extreme tiredness, hair loss, skin rashes, and sun-intolerance.
Because sunlight can make aspects of the disease worse, practicing sun avoidance is important for patients, but this can lead to vitamin D deficiency and an increase in the severity of the disease, says Eric Morand, head of the Monash Lupus Clinic and Monash University’s Southern Clinical School at Southern Health.
“In multicultural Australia, instances of vitamin D deficiency can be seen in cultural groups where clothing covers the body, in people with dark skin tone who have lower absorption, and those who practice sun avoidance,” Morand says.
“Although it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the long-term safety and effectiveness of vitamin D supplements in lupus, a clinical trial is the next step proving that supplementing vitamin D makes lupus better.”
For Morand, the battle to find new treatments carries added significance. His sister Maxine Morand, CEO of Breast Cancer Network Australia, was diagnosed with lupus more than 20 years ago, coincidentally around the same time he started researching the disease. Ms. Morand says she was just 26 when she discovered she had the autoimmune disease, meaning the body’s immune system attacks itself.
“As a patient with vitamin D deficiency, I’m fascinated by these findings,” she says. “If it can be proved that vitamin D supplementation improves outcomes for the patient and reduces symptoms, then it could significantly improve their quality of life.”
The findings will be presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian Rheumatology Association in Canberra, coinciding with the observance of World Lupus Day on May 10.
The research involved five years of clinical data and blood sample collection from the Monash Lupus Clinic at Southern Health, the only lupus-dedicated clinic in Australia.
Partners of this research include Southern Health and Arthritis Victoria.
More news from Monash University: http://www.monash.edu.au/
Please wait
3 Comments
angus murray
If we take the example of the autoimmune condition Type 1 Diabetes we know that after Finland changed from recommending 2000iu daily vitamin D3 throughout the first year of life as was typical in 1996, to come into line with other European Vit d recommendations, the consequence was Type 1 Diabetes increased 80%.
So we know from that example having higher vitamin d status from birth prevented 80% of the Type I diabetes now occuring in Finland.
“Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth-cohort study”. Pubmed 11705562
Increased vitamin D intake is therefore currently considered as one of the most promising candidates for the prevention of type 1 diabetes, and it is likely the lower levels of vitamin D resulting from atmospheric pollution, lifestyle changes, use of sunscreen, during the past decades have contributed to the recent increased trends in the incidence of this and other autoimmune diseases.
Both Vitamin D deficiency and lupus are linked to a common underlying condition – leaky gut syndrome. The trouble with lupus patients is that in most cases they can not receive the vitamin by suntun as they need to avoid heatstress.
You have some monumental misconceptions about vitamin D.
For a start you are unable to realise the difference between association and cause. Yes people with autoimmune diseases have low levels of 25OHD but this is the RESULT of disease NOT the cause.
OK so what is the cause? Bacteria!
Hardly surprisingly bacteria have a defence mechanism of displacing the native ligand (binder of the receptor) 1,25OH2D from the VDR (vitamin D receptor) using bacterial ligands. This results in lack of expression of the antimicrobial peptides and cathelicidin since the VDR controls their manufacture. When they are not produced, bacteria flourish. The VDR controls over 900 genes, some of which are crucial to the correct functioning of the immune system.
1,25D rises as the body tries to displace the bacterial ligand by increasing the concentration. But this makes virtually no difference due to the difference in affinities.
Instead, the PXR receptor becomes overactivated and as a result depresses the conversion of pre-vitamin D to 25OHD which is why calcidiol is low. RESULT NOT CAUSE!
If you exogenously increase 25D by supplementation, because its a steroid hormone, it depresses the immune system. It is a VDR antagonist unlike 1,25D which is the activator.
DONT ADVOCATE VITAMIN D SUPPLEMENTATION. It will make the patient worse in the long term as bacteria will flourish since it depresses the immune system. In the short term – exactly as an exogenous steroid like prednisone, – it will reduce symptoms because symptoms are the result iof immune activation, not the direct result of bacterial activity. To the uninitiated it seems like the patient is improving. But you are slowly killing him.
And where are these bacteria? Intracellular. That’s why they remain unrecognised. They can survive inside macrophages (immune defence cells) as L-forms (changed forms of bacteria) with which few infectious disease specialists are familiar. They don’t activate the immune system in this dormant phase but they subvert the cell machinery and the immune system, allowing more bacteria to infect the host. Eventually you wind up with many coinfections and there is an exponential increase in bacteria and decrease in the effectiveness of the immune system. what the patient needs is immune activation not suppression. It is well known that steroids only suppress symptoms but make the patient more sick in the long term.
Angus Murray