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Vitamin D is being recognised as ‘nature's antibiotic’ as a series of recent findings about the numerous health benefits of this nutrient have come into light. The vitamin is viewed as one of the most crucial nutrients.
But it is also one of the most likely to be deficient - particularly during winter when production of the vitamin almost comes to a halt for people. Analogs of the vitamin are being mulled over for use as therapeutics against tuberculosis, AIDS, and other concerns.
"About 70 percent of the population of the United States has insufficient levels of vitamin D. This is a critical issue as we learn more about the many roles it may play in fighting infection, balancing your immune response, helping to address autoimmune problems, and even preventing heart disease," said Adrian Gombart, a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.
Among other studies about advantages of Vitamin D is the one made by OSU scientists that it encourages the ‘expression’ of cathelicidin, an antimicrobial peptide gene.
This clarifies partly how it serves as the first line of resistance in the immune response against minor wounds, cuts, and both bacterial and viral infections. Experts think that advances in cathelicidin use may form the foundation for new therapies.
"Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency is a world-wide, public health problem in both developed and developing nations. Nearly one billion people world-wide are deficient," the new report said.
The new report also established that low levels of circulating vitamin D are linked to greater risk and mortality from cancer.
Vitamin D plays a vital part in setting off the immune system, nurturing the ‘inborn’ immune response and controlling over-reaction of adaptive immunity, and may aid in controlling autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.
The finding has been published in the journal, Future Microbiology.
