January 6, 2014

Dr. M

Vitamin D continues to make headlines.

1) Vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk for recurrent acute otitis media, AOM. Susanna Esposito, MD from the University of Milan studied 116 children with a history of recurrent AOM. The children received either 1000IU of Vitamin D or placebo daily for 4 months. 

The group receiving the vitamin D had significantly less AOM than the placebo group. Vitamin D is involved in many reactions in the body and is known to effect the immune systems function. This is likely the effect that we are seeing. 

2) Vitamin D supplementation has no effect on the risk of recurrent diarrheal disease in the developing world. Adam Alusio, et. al. looked at this diarrheal problem in the September 9th issue in the journal Pediatrics. 

They studied 3,046 high risk infants from Kabul, Afghanistan. They gave the vitamin D group a 100,000IU mega dose once every three months versus placebo. They found no benefit in reducing the incidence of diarrheal disease in the treated group. 

The lack of effect may have been related to the dosing interval and its incorporation into the system. Humans like most mammals naturally obtain vitamin D from the sun or through certain foods on a daily or weekly basis. The huge dose every three months has no sound basis in nature. 

Zinc and probiotic supplementation have been shown to help and prevent diarrhea. Ask your physician for dosing. 

I recommend having your vitamin D level checked at least once. Ideally, keeping the level greater than 40 ng/ml is important for health based on current data. There is still a lot of controversy over what is the best level. For now be conservative and discuss all supplementation with your physician. 

Vitamin D is important,

Dr. M