Vitamin D taken in childhood could boost the immune system of people with a family history of diabetes and help lower their risk to the disease, a new study has shown.
Lowering the incidence of diabetes could provide a significant financial boost to the NHS. It is one of the biggest burdens on the health system and the UK has the world’s fifth-highest rate of Type 1 diagnosis in children aged up to 14, according to a new international league table compiled by Diabetes UK.
Diabetes costs the NHS about £23.7bn in 2010-11, including both direct and indirect costs. The current cost of direct patient care such as treatment, intervention and complications for those living with diabetes is estimated at £9.8bn: £1bn for Type 1 and £8.8bn for Type 2.
In Type 1 diabetes the body produces antibodies that attack cells in the pancreas. That means it can’t produce insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar. Researchers followed a large group of children in the US, Finland, Sweden and Germany who were at hereditary risk of developing Type 1 diabetes and tried to see whether vitamin D levels affected their risk of developing the condition.
The study measured vitamin D levels in the blood during infancy and childhood, and then compared levels among those who did and did not develop antibodies. In general, higher vitamin D levels were linked with a lower risk of producing antibodies and therefore a lower risk of developing Type 1 diabetes.
Risk Reduced
Children with antibodies do not necessarily go on to develop Type 1 diabetes. The condition is known to run in families, although most people with a family history will not develop it.
The study documented the progress of more than 8,700 children in the four countries over six years from 2004. It was funded by six US and European research institutions linked to diabetes and kidney disease. The children were enrolled in the study before four months of age and had a follow-up every three months up to the age of two, then every six months up until May 2012.
The researchers concluded that the results “suggest vitamin D may play some part in influencing the immune response of people with a hereditary risk of Type 1 diabetes.”
While the average child’s risk of developing diabetes Type 1 is 0.5% the hereditary risk of the children in the study meant they had an average of 6%. “If what this study suggests is true, then higher levels of vitamin D would reduce the risk by 30-40%, lowering it to around 4% for these children,” it said.
The researchers said it was not clear whether the same protective effect of vitamin D would apply to children without diabetes genes. “But if it did, higher levels of vitamin D would reduce the risk only slightly, to about 0.3%,” it added.
Type 1 diabetes is sometimes referred to as “juvenile diabetes” but that term is generally regarded as out-dated because while it is commonly diagnosed in children the condition can develop at any age.
The study’s report said that many other biological, health and environmental factors are likely to influence whether or not a person at hereditary risk of Type 1 diabetes goes on to develop the condition, and these factors could also be confounding the link with vitamin D. “For example, an active outdoor lifestyle and a varied, healthy diet could influence both vitamin D levels and diabetes risk,” it said.
by Bob Graham
The post NHS: Is Vitamin D A Game Changer to Fight Diabetes? appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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