Vitamin D insufficiency and Diabetes Risks.

Curr Drug Targets. 2010 Aug 27.
Boucher BJ.
Centre for Diabetes & Metabolic Medicine, Bart's & The London Queen Mary's School of Medicine & Dentistry, London, E1 2AT, UK. bboucher at doctors.org.uk.

Diabetes is an increasing epidemic; hyperglycemia results from lack of insulin or inadequate insulin secretion following increases in insulin resistance. Huge costs are placed upon sufferers and health providers, aggravated as serious and disabling complications develop. Thus, measures to reduce the diabetic burden are public health concerns. Vitamin D, identified approximately 100 years ago, promotes calcium absorption and utilization, preventing and curing rickets & osteomalacia.

Calcium is necessary for insulin secretion, suggesting vitamin D may contribute to maintaining insulin secretion. Vitamin D, formed in skin in bright sunshine, is scarce in foodstuffs. Data linking hypovitaminosis D to hyperglycemia, type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and metabolic disorders increasing cardiovascular risk metabolic 'syndrome' has accumulated over approximately 40 years.

Many mechanisms are known whereby hypovitaminosis D could be causal, e.g.

• by increasing insulin resistance,
• reducing insulin secretion and
• increasing autoimmune or inflammatory damage to pancreatic islets.

Major questions still to be answered are whether increasing vitamin D status to the maximum seen in healthy people would reduce the risk of diabetes, the severity of the disease or of its complications, including cardiovascular disease. These questions urgently require answers. If on-going/ planned RCTs confirm causality, maintenance of adequate vitamin D status at the population level by food-fortification or supplementation would be cost-effective measures likely reducing the burden and costs of diabetes to individuals and health services. Additionally, vitamin D2/3 supplementation is cheap but whether some non-hypercalcemia-inducing analogue may prove safer has not yet been addressed at the population level. PMID: 20795936
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See also Vitamin D Life

• OVERVIEW of Diabetes and vitamin D mainly prevention, some treatment
• Type 1 diabetes patients may be pissing away vitamin D – Jan 2011
• All items in Diabetes and vitamin D category
• Less than 30 ng vitamin D greatly increased hazard of dying and diabetes – Nov 2010
• 4000 IU vitamin D improved glycemic control for type 1 diabetes – Nov 2010
• Low vitamin D predicts all cause mortality in Type 2 Diabetes – Oct 2010
• Metabolic Syndrome and vitamin D - view of many papers Aug 2010
• Take Charge of Your Diabetes 2007 book with lots of vitamin D information $5 PDF from author
• 5 Reasons Why Type One Diabetes is on the Rise (file)
• Less Diabetes if have enough CA and Vit D (file)
• Vitamin D might influence Diabetes (file)
• You Can Reverse PreDiabetes (file)
• Review of vitamin D deficiency and diabetes – Aug 2010
• Type 2 Diabetes and vitamin D – Aug 2010
• Overview of Vitamin D and Insulin – 2010 good summary tables