Will vitamin D help with multiple sclerosis?
Scientists: fish oil can prolong the life of people with multiple sclerosis
The use of large doses of vitamin D can cause the immune system to stop attacking the nerve cells of people suffering from multiple sclerosis, which will noticeably slow down the development of this incurable disease and the appearance of complications, scientists say in an article published in the journal Neurology (Sotirchos et al., Safety and immunological effects of high- vs low-dose cholecalciferol in multiple sclerosis).
"Such results have become extremely pleasant for us, since vitamin D now has a chance to become a cheap, safe and convenient means of combating the consequences of the development of multiple sclerosis. Of course, we need repeated experiments on larger groups of volunteers, and so far we do not understand why this is happening, but even such results are extremely encouraging for us," Peter Calabresi from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said (in a press release from the American Academy of Neurology Taking Vitamin D May Benefit People with MS – VM).
Calabrese and his colleagues came to such an unexpected conclusion, trying to understand why low levels of vitamin D in the body are often associated with an increased risk of becoming a victim of multiple sclerosis – an unusual condition of the body, upon the onset of which immune cells begin to attack neurons in the brain.
In multiple sclerosis, the immune system destroys myelin, which makes up the insulating sheath of nerve fibers. Without myelin, the nerves conduct the signal worse and begin to "short out", which leads to various consequences from mild numbness of the limbs to paralysis or blindness. Existing treatments for multiple sclerosis suppress the patient's immune system, making him vulnerable to infections.
Studying the relationship between vitamin D and this disease, scientists gathered a group of 40 volunteers with recurrent-remitting (periodically appearing and disappearing – ed.) form of multiple sclerosis, and offered them to take a course of vitamins, which lasted about six months.
In half of the cases, patients took normal doses of vitamin D recommended by doctors, and others – about 13 times more than the daily norm provides. As these experiments have shown, the "horse" dose of vitamin affected the work of immune cells in an unusual way – the number of cells causing inflammation in the brain dropped sharply, which had a beneficial effect on the state of their brain.
The strength of this effect, as scientists emphasize, depended on the dose of vitamin – every 5 nanograms of vitamin in the blood of patients reduced the proportion of particularly aggressive T cells by 1%. Such a force, as Calabrese hopes, will allow in the near future to choose such a strategy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, which will be able to almost completely stop the destruction of myelin and at the same time will not negatively affect the work of the rest of the immune system.
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30.12.2015