Asthma sufferers recently got some very good news from a study out of the University of Colorado Denver’s Department of Medicine. Dr. Sutherland and associates wanted to examine if vitamin D levels had any effect on the symptoms of asthma. The outcome measures they looked at were lung function and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) and they also wanted to see if there was any improvement in the response to glucocorticoid drugs. All three parameters showed that when vitamin D levels are higher, the symptoms of asthma are reduced and the response to glucocorticoid drugs is improved. Here is the summary from the authors:
“In adults with persistent asthma, higher vitamin D levels are associated with improved lung function, reduced AHR, and improved in vitro response to GCs. These findings suggest that supplementation of vitamin D in patients with asthma, when appropriate, may result in improvements in multiple parameters of asthma severity and treatment response.”
There were also a couple other interesting findings from the data that the researchers gathered. One finding that they showed was that there was an inverse relationship between the participants’ Body Mass Index and their vitamin D levels, which simply means that the fattest participants had the lowest vitamin D levels. The other interesting finding agreed with other research on vitamin D which showed that those with lower vitamin D levels had more inflammation, as measured by the marker TNF-a.
Add these benefits to the growing list of reasons to supplement with vitamin D.
Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2010 Apr 1;181(7):699-704. Vitamin D levels, lung function, and steroid response in adult asthma.Sutherland ER, Goleva E, Jackson LP, Stevens AD, Leung DY. Department of Medicine, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA.
J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2003 Jan;88(1):157-61.Body fat content and 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in healthy women.Arunabh S, Pollack S, Yeh J, Aloia JF.Bone Mineral Research Center, Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola, New York
J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2004 Mar;89(3):1196-9.The relationship between obesity and serum 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D concentrations in healthy adults.Parikh SJ, Edelman M, Uwaifo GI, Freedman RJ, Semega-Janneh M, Reynolds J, Yanovski JA.