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Dial D for danger – absurd editorial in Thorax – Oct 2012

Dial D for danger?

Andrew Bush, Ian Pavord, Editors
Thorax 2012;67:i doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl-2012-202790

Many of us are following the vitamin D papers with the same apprehension as we contemplate our erratic teenage sons—huge potential for future good, but how much damage may be done to the family home and the parental psyche in the meantime? In this issue of Thorax, we feature two contributions to the unfolding Vitamin D story.

In Basic Science for the Chest Physician, Pfeffer and Hawrylowicz steer the non-immunologists through the complexities of the actions of 1,25(OH)D3, which is now known to be generated in far more organs than just the kidney, the nuclear Vitamin D receptor, and the end-results on the expression of genes concerned in the adaptive and immune responses (see page 1017).

Although Vitamin D deficiency seems to have numerous adverse effects in a number of respiratory diseases, is it true that D is good but is more better? Not so, say the Southampton group, at least in pregnancy (see page 950); there was no relationship between maternal serum Vitamin D at 34?weeks gestation and any wheeze outcome, atopic status or lung function through to age 6 in a large group of mother-child pairs. So D would appear to be for Don't do it—Don't give vitamin D supplements to pregnant women in the hope that asthma will go away.
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Comment by Vitamin D Life:

  1. There is not a single indication of any danger of vitamin D in the editorial, nor abstracts
  2. The pregnancy study found that there was no difference between ultra-low and very low vitamin D levels of mothers on the resulting child asthma
    No supplements were given in the study, yet the editors somehow concluded that supplements are bad!
    To reduce asthma, the mother needs much more vitamin D than is now available without supplements or lots of sun

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See also Vitamin D Life

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