JAMA Network Open<\/a>\u00a0found prediabetic adults with certain variations in the vitamin D receptor gene had a 19% lower risk of developing diabetes when taking a high daily dose of vitamin D.<\/p>\nThe findings may someday help shape more personalized medical care, potentially delaying or preventing the onset of diabetes for the majority of the 115 million Americans living with prediabetes.<\/p>\n
The researchers analyzed data from the D2d study, a large, multi-site clinical trial that tested the effect of 4,000 units of vitamin D per day versus placebo in more than 2,000 US adults with prediabetes to see if a daily high dose of vitamin D would lower the chance of these particularly high-risk individuals developing diabetes.<\/p>\n
The original trial did not find a significant reduction in diabetes risk across all participants.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the D2d results raised an important question: Could vitamin D still benefit some people?\u201d says Bess Dawson-Hughes, the study\u2019s lead author and a senior scientist at the\u202fJean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiabetes has so many serious complications that develop slowly over years. If we can delay the time period that an individual will spend living with diabetes, we can stop some of those harmful side effects or lessen their severity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through an earlier analysis, the D2d research team found that blood levels of 40 to 50 ng\/mL of 25-hydroxyvitamin D or higher were linked to substantial and progressively larger reductions in participants\u2019 risk of developing diabetes.<\/p>\n
Vitamin D circulating in the blood is converted into its active form in the body before binding to the vitamin D receptor\u2014a protein that helps cells respond to the vitamin. The researchers wondered whether genetic differences in this receptor might explain why some people benefited from vitamin D while others did not. The pancreas\u2019s insulin-producing cells have vitamin D receptors, suggesting the vitamin may help influence insulin release and blood sugar control.<\/p>\n
For the new study, Dawson-Hughes and her colleagues analyzed genetic data from 2,098 trial participants who had consented to DNA testing according to two groups: participants who appeared to benefit from vitamin D supplementation and those who did not. They then compared response rates by subgroups of patients sorted according to three common variations in the vitamin D receptor gene.<\/p>\n
This analysis revealed that adults with the AA variation of the ApaI vitamin D receptor gene\u2014about 30% of the study population\u2014did not respond to daily treatment with a high dose of vitamin D, compared with placebo. In contrast, the analysis found that the same treatment in adults with the AC or CC variations of the vitamin D receptor gene saw a significantly reduced risk of developing diabetes compared with those taking a placebo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe findings may represent an important step toward developing a personalized approach to lowering the risk of developing type 2 diabetes among high-risk adults,\u201d says Anastassios Pittas, GBS06, the study\u2019s senior author, a professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, and chief of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at Tufts Medical Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of what makes vitamin D appealing as a potential preventive tool is that it is inexpensive, widely available, and easy for people to take.\u201d<\/p>\n
The authors caution that the findings do not mean people should start taking high doses of vitamin D on their own to prevent diabetes. Current guidelines recommend 600 IU per day for people ages 1 to 70 and 800 IU per day for those older than 70. Taking too much vitamin D can be harmful and has been linked to an increased risk of falls and fractures in older adults. More research is needed to better understand which individuals might benefit from a higher daily dose.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur findings suggest we may eventually be able to identify which patients with prediabetes are most likely to benefit from additional vitamin D supplementation,\u201d says Dawson-Hughes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn principle, this could involve a single, relatively inexpensive genetic test.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: Tufts University<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share this Article You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. A new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3535,134,111,139,69,3695],"class_list":{"0":"post-395899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-diabetes","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-vitamin-d"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}