More on vitamin D

[copyman]

not sure if this has been posted already but here is more on vit D. I think most people should be supplementing with 2000+ IU's per day.

Vitamin D Has Benefits in Chronic HCV Infection
Megan Brooks

Authors and Disclosures

November 5, 2009 (Boston, Massachusetts) — Supplementing pegylated interferon-alfa2b and ribavirin with a daily dose of vitamin D might increase virologic response rates, according to results of a late-breaking abstract reported here at The Liver Meeting 2009, the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).
"Vitamin D is a potent immunomodulator whose impact on virologic response rates of interferon-based treatment of chronic HCV [hepatitis C] is unknown," lead investigator Saif M. Abu-Mouch, MD, from the Department of Hepatology, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, in Hadera, Israel, and colleagues note in their abstract.

"This preliminary study confirms the benefit of adding vitamin D to conventional antiviral therapy in patients with chronic HCV," Dr. Abu-Mouch told meeting attendees.

In the study, 58 patients with confirmed chronic HCV (genotype 1) were randomly assigned to peginterferon-alfa2b (1.5 µg/kg once weekly) plus ribavirin (1000 to 2000 mg/day). Thirty-one patients also received vitamin D (1000 to 4000 IU/day; serum level >32 ng/mL).

The vitamin D group had a higher mean body mass index (27 vs 24 kg/m2; P < .01), viral load (68% vs 58%; P  F2, 55% vs 18%; P < .001) than the group that did not receive vitamin D. Demographics, disease characteristics, ethnicity, baseline biochemical parameters, and adherence to treatment were similar in the 2 study groups.

A rapid virologic response was seen at week 4 in 44% of the vitamin D group and in 18% of the control group. At week 12, Dr. Abu-Mouch told Medscape Gastroenterology, 96% of the vitamin D group (26 of 27 patients) were HCV RNA-negative, as assessed by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, as was 48% of the control group (15 of 31 patients), which was a significant difference (P < .001), he said.

The combination of peginterferon and ribavirin, the standard of care for chronic HCV, achieves a sustained virologic response in 40% to 50% of naïve patients with genotype 1, the investigators explain in a meeting abstract. Vitamin D in combination with peginterferon-ribavirin "may have synergistic effects," Dr. Abu-Mouch said.

Meeting attendee Laurent Tsakiris, MD, from the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Melun in France, who was not involved in the study, told Medscape Gastroenterology that "the study is surprising and promising because vitamin D is something very easy to use and there is no toxicity."

"It's also interesting," he said, "that the group treated with vitamin D had more severe disease than the control group. I think this can be considered a strong result from a small study.

The study did not receive commercial support. Dr. Abu-Mouch and Dr. Tsakiris have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

The Liver Meeting 2009: 60th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD): Abstract LB20. Presented November 2, 2009.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/711902

[mikesimon]

Well, we all know about opinions - everyone has them just like everyone has an ...........

I think you're right about darker skinned people and vitamin d by the way.

Peace out

Yo,
Mike

[spontcumb]

From what I've read, people with darker skin, such as Blacks, Hispanics,etc, have more difficulty obtaining Vitamin D via sunlight than Caucasians.  It has to do with the level or amount of Melatonin in a person.  Those with darker skin have more melatonin, relative to whites, and this makes exposure to sunlight much less effective for dark skinned individuals to obtain Vitamin D via sunlight.
Also, it has been documented that interferon can cause Vitamin D deficiency in people.  I just found out from my doc that I am "severely" deficient in Vitamin D.  Now, if I can find out why all of my teeth have "died" and fallen out, I would be a happy camper.  I believe that the combo drugs for tx can cause other diseases/disorders, which were being "contained" by our immune systems prior to putting those 2 poisons into our bodies......just MHO.  Peace!  

[Diane12855]

All of the above comments are very informative, and I'm going to be tested too. I do think that we should pay attention to the warnings about over dosing. That can be very damaging to our liver and kidneys. Some people may read about the benefits and run out and buy some at the store and load up like people did with vitamin C when it was discovered that it helped with immunity. At least vitamin C is water soluble and could be flushed out when they over dosed. Vitamin D is fat soluble, so an overdose will be much harder to deal with.

Just be careful.

[smaug48]

Thanks for the links.  I found the following about which test to take on the Vitamin D Council's website, which prompted me to ask you for your source.

You'll have to make your own decision on whether this site is objective or not.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/deficiency/am-i-vitamin-d-deficient.shtml

You can have your doctor order the test—some insurance companies will pay for a 25(OH)D test, some will not. Unfortunately, about 20% of United States doctors order the wrong test. They order a 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D, thinking that by measuring the most potent steroid in the human body, calcitriol, they are getting useful information. They are not. 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D is an adaptive hormone; it goes up and down with calcium intake. So these doctors see the 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D is normal or high and tell their patients that they are ok when really, they are vitamin D deficient—advice that may prove fatal. Furthermore, most doctors who see a 25(OH)D of 30 ng/ml (75 nmol/L) will tell you that level is fine when it is not—that is, few doctors know how to correctly interpret the test results.

[Cheesegrater]

Some sites I found of interest and of help in an article I wrote.

http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec01/ch004/ch004k.html

http://ncp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/full/22/3/305
Nutrition in Clinical Practice, Vol. 22, No. 3, 305-322 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0115426507022003305

http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2008/10/hepatitis_c_and_11.html

http://vitamind.ucr.edu/biochem.html

http://ncp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/full/22/3/305

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D, http://vitamind.ucr.edu/biochem.html

[smaug48]

Cheesegrater, can you post the source of the previous post?  I'd like to pass it on to a medical professional.

smaug