Endocrine Abstracts

Vitamin D is photosynthesized in all forms of life from the phytoplankton 750 mya. Evolutionary pressures due to variation in climate play an important role in shaping phenotypic variation and influence variation in phenotypes. Migration out-of-Africa and change of living latitude placed human vit D as part of an evolutionary complex that adapted hominids to changing u.v. radiation. The ‘vit D hypothesis’ to explain skin pigmentation is based on the observation that ...

Vitamin D deficiency is more common in pregnant women than in non-pregnant women of similar age. Clinical vitamin D deficiency, associated with rickets and osteomalacia, may occur when serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) is lower than 25 nmol/l. The required serum 25(OH)D is currently set at 50 nmol/l, as lower levels are associated with lower bone mineral density, increased fracture risk and other outcomes such as lower physical performance than a vitamin D adequate state, i....

The pre-diabetic autoimmune process leading to clinical type 1 diabetes may start already during early infancy. As the incidence of type 1 diabetes is increasing most rapidly among children younger than 5 years in many high and middle income countries (Patterson et al. 2009), there is increasing interest in the impact of early exposures such as diet even before birth.Vitamin D has several effects on the immune system, which could be of potential r...