recent study from pub med on Vit D

[Guest guest]

: J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Oct;25(5):395-402. Books, LinkOut

Vitamin D status in a rural postmenopausal female population.

Lappe JM,

Davies KM,

Travers-Gustafson D,

Heaney RP.

Creighton University Medical Center, Osteoporosis Research Center, 601 North 30

Street-

Suite 4820, Omaha, NE 68131, USA. jmlappe@...

BACKGROUND: Inadequate vitamin D nutritional status is increasingly recognized

as

common in North American and European populations, but the extent of the

shortfall and

the parameters of the distribution for populations of interest remain uncertain.

PURPOSE:

To report the distribution of values for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] in

a

population of rural postmenopausal women, together with quantification of

factors related

to vitamin D status. SETTING: Nine largely agrarian counties in eastern Nebraska

(approximately 41 degrees N). PARTICIPANTS: A population-based sample of 1,179

women 55 years of age and older recruited into a four-year trial of calcium and

vitamin D

supplementation. METHODS: Baseline biochemical, dietary, and anthropometric

measurements obtained on entry into trial. RESULTS: Serum 25(OH)D concentration

at

baseline varied cyclically with season, with the solar cycle explaining 2.9% of

the total

variance (P < 0.001). Mean seasonally adjusted 25(OH)D concentration was 71.1

nmol/L.

Serum 25(OH)D also exhibited the expected inverse curvilinear relationship with

serum

parathyroid hormone (PTH), with the inflection point of the curve located at

approximately

80 nmol/L. Supplements containing vitamin D were regularly taken by 59% of the

cohort

(median dose: 200 IU/d). Nevertheless, approximately 4% of all women had values

below

the laboratory reference range and more than two-thirds fell below 80 nmol/L.

Seasonally

adjusted serum 25(OH)D concentration was positively correlated with the size of

daily

vitamin D supplement dose, and negatively with age, weight, and body mass index

(P <

0.01 for all). In stepwise multiple linear regression models, weight, age, and

supplement

dose were independently correlated with seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D, and

together

explained 19% of the total variance of adjusted 25(OH)D concentration. Women

taking

supplements had only one-sixth the chance of having a 25(OH)D value below the

reference limit of the assay, compared to women who did not use supplements.

CONCLUSIONS: Approximately two-thirds of this rural population fell below 80

nmol/L, a

value considered to be the lower end of the optimal range. Based on the slope of

25(OH)D

on supplement dose observed in these women, it would require an additional

vitamin D

input of nearly 2000 IU/d to reach the goal of an RDA for vitamin D, i.e., to

bring 97.5% of

the cohort to levels of 80 nmol/L or higher.

PMID: 17031008 [PubMed - in process]

[Guest guest]

Karin, i know i've ased u a million time...what brand of vit D and calcium are u taking?bigbird3099 wrote: : J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Oct;25(5):395-402. Books, LinkOutVitamin D status in a rural postmenopausal female population.Lappe JM, Davies KM, Travers-Gustafson D, Heaney RP.Creighton University Medical Center, Osteoporosis Research Center, 601 North 30 Street-Suite 4820, Omaha, NE 68131, USA. jmlappecreighton (DOT) eduBACKGROUND: Inadequate vitamin D nutritional status is increasingly recognized as common in North American and European populations, but the extent of the shortfall and the parameters of the distribution for populations of interest remain uncertain. PURPOSE: To report the distribution of values for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] in a population of rural postmenopausal women, together with quantification of factors related to vitamin D status. SETTING: Nine largely agrarian counties in eastern Nebraska (approximately 41 degrees N). PARTICIPANTS: A population-based sample of 1,179 women 55 years of age and older recruited into a four-year trial of calcium and vitamin D supplementation. METHODS: Baseline biochemical, dietary, and anthropometric measurements obtained on entry into trial. RESULTS: Serum 25(OH)D concentration at baseline varied cyclically with

season, with the solar cycle explaining 2.9% of the total variance (P < 0.001). Mean seasonally adjusted 25(OH)D concentration was 71.1 nmol/L. Serum 25(OH)D also exhibited the expected inverse curvilinear relationship with serum parathyroid hormone (PTH), with the inflection point of the curve located at approximately 80 nmol/L. Supplements containing vitamin D were regularly taken by 59% of the cohort (median dose: 200 IU/d). Nevertheless, approximately 4% of all women had values below the laboratory reference range and more than two-thirds fell below 80 nmol/L. Seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D concentration was positively correlated with the size of daily vitamin D supplement dose, and negatively with age, weight, and body mass index (P < 0.01 for all). In stepwise multiple linear regression models, weight, age, and supplement dose were independently correlated with seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D, and together

explained 19% of the total variance of adjusted 25(OH)D concentration. Women taking supplements had only one-sixth the chance of having a 25(OH)D value below the reference limit of the assay, compared to women who did not use supplements. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately two-thirds of this rural population fell below 80 nmol/L, a value considered to be the lower end of the optimal range. Based on the slope of 25(OH)D on supplement dose observed in these women, it would require an additional vitamin D input of nearly 2000 IU/d to reach the goal of an RDA for vitamin D, i.e., to bring 97.5% of the cohort to levels of 80 nmol/L or higher.PMID: 17031008 [PubMed - in process]

#define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare

[Guest guest]

The last sentence, about a dosage of 2000 units, is repeated in the following PubMed article, not so much in relation to hormones as about influenza... I was reading about D at the same time as you were, . Jesa http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online & aid=469543 here is the full study: Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D 15 Sep 2006 In early April of 2005, after a particularly rainy spring, an influenza epidemic (epi: upon, demic: people) exploded through the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane where I have worked for the last ten years. It was not the pandemic (pan: all, demic: people) we all fear, just an epidemic.

The world is waiting and governments are preparing for the next pandemic. A severe influenza pandemic will kill many more Americans than died in the World Trade Centers, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina combined, perhaps a million people in the USA alone. Such a disaster would tear the fabric of American society. Our entire country might resemble the Superdome or Bourbon Street after Hurricane Katrina. It's only a question of when a pandemic

will come, not if it will come. Influenza A pandemics come every 30 years or so, severe ones every hundred years or so. The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu, occurred in 1968 - killing 34,000 Americans. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic killed more than 500,000 Americans. So many millions died in other countries, they couldn't bury the bodies. Young healthy adults, in the prime of their lives in the morning, drowning in their own inflammation by noon, grossly discolored by sunset, were dead at midnight. Their body's own broad-spectrum natural antibiotics, called antimicrobial

peptides, seemed nowhere to be found. An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus - white blood cells releasing large amounts of inflammatory agents called cytokines and chemokines into the lungs of the doomed - resulted in millions of deaths in 1918. As I am now a psychiatrist, and no longer a general practitioner, I was not directly involved in fighting the influenza epidemic in our hospital. However, our internal medicine specialists worked overtime as they diagnosed and treated a rapidly increasing number of stricken patients. Our Chief Medical Officer quarantined one ward after another as more and more patients were gripped with the chills, fever, cough, and severe body aches that typifies the clinical presentation of influenza A. Epidemic influenza kills a million people in the world

every year by causing pneumonia, "the captain of the men of death." These epidemics are often explosive; the word influenza comes from Italian (Medieval Latin ?nfluentia) or influence, because of the belief that the sudden and abrupt epidemics were due to the influence of some extraterrestrial force. One seventeenth century observer described it well when he wrote, "suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent by some blast from the stars, which laid hold on very many together: that in some towns, in the space of a week, above a thousand people fell sick together." I guess our hospital was under luckier stars as only about 12% of our patients were infected and no one died. However, as the epidemic progressed, I noticed something unusual. First, the ward below mine was infected, and then the ward on my right, left, and across the hall - but no patients on my

ward became ill. My patients had intermingled with patients from infected wards before the quarantines. The nurses on my unit cross-covered on infected wards. Surely, my patients were exposed to the influenza A virus. How did my patients escape infection from what some think is the most infectious of all the respiratory viruses? My patients were no younger, no healthier, and in no obvious way different from patients on other wards. Like other wards, my patients are mostly African Americans who came from the same prisons and jails as patients on the infected wards. They were prescribed a similar assortment of powerful psychotropic medications we use throughout the hospital to reduce the symptoms of psychosis, depression, and violent mood swings and to try to prevent patients from killing themselves or attacking other patients and the nursing staff. If

my patients were similar to the patients on all the adjoining wards, why didn't even one of my patients catch the flu? A short while later, a group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone - a hormone most of us take for granted - was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body's production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic

properties was plain old vitamin D. All of the patients on my ward had been taking 2,000 units of vitamin D every day for several months or longer. Could that be the reason none of my patients caught the flu? I then contacted Professors Reinhold Vieth and Ed Giovannucci and told them of my observations. They immediately advised me to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 units of vitamin D, not just the ones on my ward, to see if the results were statistically significant. It turns out that the observations on my ward alone were of borderline statistical significance and could have been due to chance alone. Administrators at our hospital agreed, and are still attempting to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 or more units of vitamin D at the time of the epidemic. Four years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it's the only known precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D - like all steroid hormones - damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic _expression in hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks. Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish

are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass. The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our

diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements. The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is the dramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and the modern one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that's the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as "Adequate Intake." It's what we call an "order

of magnitude" difference. Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shines directly overhead much of the year and where our species must have obtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spite of our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racial pigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Even after humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidly lightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humans worked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we began to work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travel inside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather on sunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lower vitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin D levels in modern humans are not just low - they

are aberrantly low. About three years ago, after studying all I could about vitamin D, I began testing my patient's vitamin D blood levels and giving them literature on vitamin D deficiency. All their blood levels were low, which is not surprising as vitamin D deficiency is practically universal among dark-skinned people who live at temperate latitudes. Furthermore, my patients come directly from prison or jail, where they get little opportunity for sun exposure. After finding out that all my patients had low levels, many profoundly low, I started educating them and offering to prescribe them 2,000 units of vitamin D a day, the U.S. government's "Upper Limit." Could

vitamin D be the reason none of my patients got the flu? In the last several years, dozens of medical studies have called attention to worldwide vitamin D deficiency, especially among African Americans and the elderly, the two groups most likely to die from influenza. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease, depression, chronic pain, depression, gum disease, diabetes, hypertension, and a number of other diseases have recently been associated with vitamin D deficiency. Was it possible that influenza was as well? Then I thought of three mysteries that I first learned in medical school at the University of North Carolina: (1) although the influenza virus exists in the population year-round, influenza is a wintertime illnesses; (2) children with vitamin D deficient rickets are much more likely to suffer from respiratory infections; (3) the elderly in most countries are much more likely to die in the winter than the summer (excess wintertime mortality), and most of that excess mortality, although listed as cardiac, is, in fact, due to influenza. Could vitamin D explain these three mysteries, mysteries that account for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year? Studies have found the influenza virus is present in the population year-around; why is it a wintertime illness? Even the common cold got its name because it is common in cold weather and rare in the summer. Vitamin D blood levels are at their highest in the summer but reach their lowest levels during the flu and cold season. Could such a simple explanation explain these mysteries? The British researcher, Dr. R. Edgar Hope-Simpson, was the first to document the most mysterious feature

of epidemic influenza, its wintertime surfeit and summertime scarcity. He theorized that an unknown "seasonal factor" was at work, a factor that might be affecting innate human immunity. Hope-Simpson was a general practitioner who became famous in the late 1960's after he discovered the cause of shingles. British authorities bestowed every prize they had on him, not only because of the importance of his discovery, but because he made the discovery own his own, without the benefit of a university appointment, and without any formal training in epidemiology (the detective branch of medicine that methodically searches for clues about the cause of disease). After his work on shingles, Hope-Simpson spent the rest of his working life studying influenza. He concluded a "seasonal factor" was at work, something that was regularly and predictably impairing human

immunity in the winter and restoring it in the summer. He discovered that communities widely separated by longitude, but which shared similar latitude, would simultaneously develop influenza. He discovered that influenza epidemics in Great Britain in the 17th and 18th century occurred simultaneously in widely separated communities, before modern transportation could possibly explain its rapid dissemination. Hope-Simpson concluded a "seasonal factor" was triggering these epidemics. Whatever it was, he was certain that the deadly "crop" of influenza that sprouts around the winter solstice was intimately involved with solar radiation. Hope-Simpson predicted that, once discovered, the "seasonal factor" would "provide the key to understanding most of the influenza problems

confronting us." Hope-Simpson had no way of knowing that vitamin D has profound effects on human immunity, no way of knowing that it increases production of broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides, peptides that quickly destroy the influenza virus. We have only recently learned how vitamin D increases production of antimicrobial peptides while simultaneously preventing the immune system from releasing too many inflammatory cells, called chemokines and cytokines, into infected lung tissue. In 1918, when medical scientists did autopsies on some of the fifty million people who died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they were amazed to find destroyed respiratory tracts; sometimes these inflammatory cytokines had triggered the complete destruction of the normal epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract. It was

as if the flu victims had been attacked and killed by their own immune systems. This is the severe inflammatory reaction that vitamin D has recently been found to prevent. I subsequently did what physicians have done for centuries. I experimented, first on myself and then on my family, trying different doses of vitamin D to see if it has any effects on viral respiratory infections. After that, as the word spread, several of my medical colleagues experimented on themselves by taking three-day courses of pharmacological doses (2,000 units per kilogram per day) of vitamin D at the first sign of the flu. I also asked numerous colleagues and friends who were taking physiological doses of vitamin D (5,000 units per day in the winter and less, or none, in the summer) if they ever got colds or the flu, and, if so, how severe the infections were. I became

convinced that physiological doses of vitamin D reduce the incidence of viral respiratory infections and that pharmacological doses significantly ameliorate the symptoms of some viral respiratory infections if taken early in the course of the illness. However, such observations are so personal, so likely to be biased, that they are worthless science. As I waited for the hospital to finish collecting data from all the patients taking vitamin D at the time of the outbreak - to see if it really reduced the incidence of influenza - I decided to research the literature thoroughly, finding all the clues in the world's medical literature that indicated if vitamin D played any role in preventing influenza or other viral respiratory infections. I worked on the paper for over a year, writing it with Professor Giovannucci of Harvard, Professor Reinhold Vieth of

the University of Toronto, Professor Holick of Boston University, Professor Cedric Garland of U.C., San Diego, as well as Dr. Umhau of the National Institute of Health, Sasha Madronich of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Dr. Bill Grant at the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center. After numerous revisions, we submitted our paper to the same widely respected journal where Dr. Hope-Simpson published most of his work several decades ago. Epidemiology and Infection, known as The Journal of Hygiene in Hope- Simpson's day, recently published our paper. The editor, Professor Norman Noah, knew Dr. Hope-Simpson and helped tremendously with the paper. In the paper, we detailed our theory that vitamin D is Hope- Simpson's long forgotten "seasonal stimulus." We proposed that annual fluctuations in vitamin D levels explain the

seasonality of influenza. The periodic seasonal fluctuations in 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels, which cause recurrent and predictable wintertime vitamin D deficiency, predispose human populations to influenza epidemics. We raised the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency in the same way that an unusual form of pneumonia (pneumocystis carinii) is a symptom of AIDS. That is, we theorized that Bernard Shaw was right when he said, "the characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause." In the paper, we propose that vitamin D explains the following 14 observations: 1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest, 2. Why it disappears

in the months following the summer solstice, 3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season, 4. Why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin D blood levels, is associated with influenza, 5. Why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated with outdoor temperatures, 6. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds, 7. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections, 8. Why Russian scientists found that vitamin D-producing UVB

lamps reduced colds and flu in schoolchildren and factory workers, 9. Why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberately infected with a weakened flu virus - first in the summer and then again in the winter - show significantly different clinical courses in the different seasons, 10. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter, 11. Why children with vitamin D deficiency and rickets suffer from frequent respiratory infections, 12. Why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses

of vitamin D to children who were constantly sick from colds and the flu, found the treated children were suddenly free from infection, 13. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter rather than in the summer, 14. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are. Although our paper discusses the possibility that physiological doses of vitamin D (5,000 units a day) may prevent colds and the flu, and that physicians might find pharmacological doses of vitamin D (2,000 units per kilogram of body weight per day for three days) useful in treating some of the one million people who die in the world every year from influenza, we remind readers that

it is only a theory. Like all theories, our theory must withstand attempts to be disproved with dispassionately conducted and well-controlled scientific experiments. However, as vitamin D deficiency has repeatedly been associated with many of the diseases of civilization, we point out that it is not too early for physicians to aggressively diagnose and adequately treat vitamin D deficiency. We recommend that enough vitamin D be taken daily to maintain 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels at levels normally achieved through summertime sun exposure (50 ng/ml). For many persons, such as African Americans and the elderly, this will require up to 5,000 units daily in the winter and less, or none, in the summer, depending on summertime sun exposure. By: J. J. Cannell Acknowldegement: We wish to thank Professor Norman Noah of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Scragg of the University of Auckland and Professor Heaney of Creighton University for reviewing the manuscript and making many useful suggestions. -- Dr. Cannell, Atascadero State Hospital, 10333 El Camino Real, Atascadero, CA 93422, USA, 805 468-2061, jcannell@... <../../../../WAPFchapterleaders/post?postID=k0SobYgZVwEahRcErqYgfCKlT8FY\ Dacdz3QFQV7xKGNDVna8WjIy4mcUcimSkEuH_HNyQLSYmDYoev0Um2NQWK16Fb3y> -- Professor Reinhold Vieth, Mount Sinai Hospital, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Department of Medicine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada -- Dr. Umhau, Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD -- Professor Holick, Departments of Medicine and Physiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA -- Dr. Bill Grant, SUNARC, San Francisco, CA -- Dr. Sasha Madronich, Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA -- Professor Cedric Garland, Department of

Family and Preventive Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA -- Professor Giovannucci, Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA http://www.vitamindcouncil.com <http://www.vitamindcouncil.com/> Cannell JJ, Vieth R, Umhau JC, Holick MF, Grant WB, Madronich S, Garland CF, and Giovanucci E. Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect. 2006 Sep 7;:1-12 (Epub ahead of print) Link

Here. Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php? <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?> newsid=51913 Sullivan wrote: Karin, i know i've ased u a million time...what brand of vit D and calcium are u taking?bigbird3099 wrote: : J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Oct;25(5):395-402. Books, LinkOutVitamin D status in a rural postmenopausal female population.Lappe JM, Davies KM, Travers-Gustafson D, Heaney RP.Creighton University Medical Center, Osteoporosis Research Center, 601 North 30 Street-Suite 4820, Omaha, NE 68131, USA. jmlappecreighton (DOT) eduBACKGROUND: Inadequate vitamin D nutritional status is increasingly recognized as common in North American and European populations, but the extent of the shortfall and the parameters of the distribution for populations of interest remain uncertain. PURPOSE: To report the distribution of values for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] in a population of rural postmenopausal women, together with quantification of factors related to vitamin D status. SETTING: Nine largely agrarian counties

in eastern Nebraska (approximately 41 degrees N). PARTICIPANTS: A population-based sample of 1,179 women 55 years of age and older recruited into a four-year trial of calcium and vitamin D supplementation. METHODS: Baseline biochemical, dietary, and anthropometric measurements obtained on entry into trial. RESULTS: Serum 25(OH)D concentration at baseline varied cyclically with season, with the solar cycle explaining 2.9% of the total variance (P < 0.001). Mean seasonally adjusted 25(OH)D concentration was 71.1 nmol/L. Serum 25(OH)D also exhibited the expected inverse curvilinear relationship with serum parathyroid hormone (PTH), with the inflection point of the curve located at approximately 80 nmol/L. Supplements containing vitamin D were regularly taken by 59% of the cohort (median dose: 200 IU/d). Nevertheless, approximately 4% of all women had values below the laboratory reference range and more than two-thirds fell

below 80 nmol/L. Seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D concentration was positively correlated with the size of daily vitamin D supplement dose, and negatively with age, weight, and body mass index (P < 0.01 for all). In stepwise multiple linear regression models, weight, age, and supplement dose were independently correlated with seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D, and together explained 19% of the total variance of adjusted 25(OH)D concentration. Women taking supplements had only one-sixth the chance of having a 25(OH)D value below the reference limit of the assay, compared to women who did not use supplements. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately two-thirds of this rural population fell below 80 nmol/L, a value considered to be the lower end of the optimal range. Based on the slope of 25(OH)D on supplement dose observed in these women, it would require an additional vitamin D input of nearly 2000 IU/d to reach the goal of an RDA for

vitamin D, i.e., to bring 97.5% of the cohort to levels of 80 nmol/L or higher.PMID: 17031008 [PubMed - in process] #define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare

Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the new Yahoo.com

[Guest guest]

I was taking Drisdol (prescription only) but now I take Carlsons 2000 IU D3 and

an

additional 800 IU to 1000IU in my calcium pill(Premcal or gel tab from health

food store).

So I take about 3000 IU D3 a day and about 1000mg calcium per day.

Karin

: J Am Coll Nutr. 2006

Oct;25(5):395-402.

Books, LinkOut

> Vitamin D status in a rural postmenopausal female population.

>

> Lappe JM,

> Davies KM,

> Travers-Gustafson D,

> Heaney RP.

> Creighton University Medical Center, Osteoporosis Research Center, 601 North

30

Street-

> Suite 4820, Omaha, NE 68131, USA. jmlappe@...

> BACKGROUND: Inadequate vitamin D nutritional status is increasingly recognized

as

> common in North American and European populations, but the extent of the

shortfall

and

> the parameters of the distribution for populations of interest remain

uncertain.

PURPOSE:

> To report the distribution of values for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]

in a

> population of rural postmenopausal women, together with quantification of

factors

related

> to vitamin D status. SETTING: Nine largely agrarian counties in eastern

Nebraska

> (approximately 41 degrees N). PARTICIPANTS: A population-based sample of 1,179

> women 55 years of age and older recruited into a four-year trial of calcium

and vitamin

D

> supplementation. METHODS: Baseline biochemical, dietary, and anthropometric

> measurements obtained on entry into trial. RESULTS: Serum 25(OH)D

concentration at

> baseline varied cyclically with season, with the solar cycle explaining 2.9%

of the total

> variance (P < 0.001). Mean seasonally adjusted 25(OH)D concentration was 71.1

nmol/L.

> Serum 25(OH)D also exhibited the expected inverse curvilinear relationship

with serum

> parathyroid hormone (PTH), with the inflection point of the curve located at

approximately

> 80 nmol/L. Supplements containing vitamin D were regularly taken by 59% of the

cohort

> (median dose: 200 IU/d). Nevertheless, approximately 4% of all women had

values below

> the laboratory reference range and more than two-thirds fell below 80 nmol/L.

Seasonally

> adjusted serum 25(OH)D concentration was positively correlated with the size

of daily

> vitamin D supplement dose, and negatively with age, weight, and body mass

index (P <

> 0.01 for all). In stepwise multiple linear regression models, weight, age, and

supplement

> dose were independently correlated with seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D, and

together

> explained 19% of the total variance of adjusted 25(OH)D concentration. Women

taking

> supplements had only one-sixth the chance of having a 25(OH)D value below the

> reference limit of the assay, compared to women who did not use supplements.

> CONCLUSIONS: Approximately two-thirds of this rural population fell below 80

nmol/L,

a

> value considered to be the lower end of the optimal range. Based on the slope

of 25(OH)

D

> on supplement dose observed in these women, it would require an additional

vitamin D

> input of nearly 2000 IU/d to reach the goal of an RDA for vitamin D, i.e., to

bring 97.5%

of

> the cohort to levels of 80 nmol/L or higher.

> PMID: 17031008 [PubMed - in process]

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> #define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare

>

[Guest guest]

Thank you so, so much for pasting that fascinating article on Vitamin D. That

could be

life-saving information if we do get a pandemic of influenza. It is also very

interesting to

me at this time because I am taking prednisone for a week to try to stop a

bronchitis that

has been going on for 6 weeks, ever since I aspirated some bile acid after

repeated

vomiting during a food poisoning episode. I know that as soon as I quit the

prednisone, I

will start coughing again. Now I have hope that taking 2000 units of Vitamin D a

day will

let my body's own steroid get a grip on my respiratory symptoms. I always want

to use

natural means to cure a disease, and not drugs to temporarily mask symptoms. It

seems

that operating, performing expensive diagnostic tests, and giving drugs is all

American

doctors know how to do, and sometimes I take drugs out of desperation when I

don't

know what else to do.

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Karin, thank you for posting..interesting...i am currently taking 600IUs of D3..working my way up to a 1000, but i am having problem with a good calcium supplement without boron in it... -J.Jesa Damora wrote: The last sentence, about a dosage of 2000 units, is repeated in the following PubMed article, not so much in relation to hormones as about influenza... I was reading about D at the same time as you were, .

Jesahttp://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online & aid=469543here is the full study: Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D15 Sep 2006 In early April of 2005, after a particularly rainy spring, aninfluenza epidemic (epi: upon, demic: people) exploded through themaximum-security hospital for the criminally insane where I haveworked for the last ten years. It was not the pandemic (pan: all,demic: people) we all fear, just an epidemic. The world is waitingand governments are preparing for the next pandemic. A severeinfluenza pandemic will kill many more Americans than died in theWorld Trade Centers, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War, and HurricaneKatrina combined, perhaps a million people in the USA alone. Such adisaster would tear the fabric of American society. Our entirecountry might resemble the Superdome or Bourbon Street afterHurricane Katrina. It's only a question of when a pandemic will come, not if it willcome. Influenza A pandemics come every 30 years or so, severe onesevery hundred years or so. The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu,occurred in 1968 - killing 34,000 Americans. In 1918, the Great FluEpidemic killed more than 500,000 Americans. So many millions diedin

other countries, they couldn't bury the bodies. Young healthyadults, in the prime of their lives in the morning, drowning intheir own inflammation by noon, grossly discolored by sunset, weredead at midnight. Their body's own broad-spectrum naturalantibiotics, called antimicrobial peptides, seemed nowhere to befound. An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus -white blood cells releasing large amounts of inflammatory agentscalled cytokines and chemokines into the lungs of the doomed -resulted in millions of deaths in 1918. As I am now a psychiatrist, and no longer a general practitioner, Iwas not directly involved in fighting the influenza epidemic in ourhospital. However, our internal

medicine specialists worked overtimeas they diagnosed and treated a rapidly increasing number ofstricken patients. Our Chief Medical Officer quarantined one wardafter another as more and more patients were gripped with thechills, fever, cough, and severe body aches that typifies theclinical presentation of influenza A. Epidemic influenza kills a million people in the world every year bycausing pneumonia, "the captain of the men of death." Theseepidemics are often explosive; the word influenza comes from Italian(Medieval Latin ?nfluentia) or influence, because of the belief thatthe sudden and abrupt epidemics were due to the influence of someextraterrestrial force. One seventeenth century observer describedit well when he wrote, "suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent bysome blast from the stars, which laid hold on very many together:that in some towns, in the space of a

week, above a thousand peoplefell sick together." I guess our hospital was under luckier stars as only about 12% ofour patients were infected and no one died. However, as the epidemicprogressed, I noticed something unusual. First, the ward below minewas infected, and then the ward on my right, left, and across thehall - but no patients on my ward became ill. My patients hadintermingled with patients from infected wards before thequarantines. The nurses on my unit cross-covered on infected wards.Surely, my patients were exposed to the influenza A virus. How didmy patients escape infection from what some think is the mostinfectious of all the respiratory viruses? My patients were no younger, no healthier, and in no obvious waydifferent from patients on other wards. Like other wards, mypatients are mostly African Americans who

came from the same prisonsand jails as patients on the infected wards. They were prescribed asimilar assortment of powerful psychotropic medications we usethroughout the hospital to reduce the symptoms of psychosis,depression, and violent mood swings and to try to prevent patientsfrom killing themselves or attacking other patients and the nursingstaff. If my patients were similar to the patients on all theadjoining wards, why didn't even one of my patients catch the flu? A short while later, a group of scientists from UCLA published aremarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA groupconfirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturallyoccurring steroid hormone - a hormone most of us take for granted -was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killingbacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increasesthe body's

production of a remarkable class of proteins, calledantimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptidesdirectly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, andviruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role inkeeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showedthese remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D. All of the patients on my ward had been taking 2,000 units ofvitamin D every day for several months or longer. Could that be thereason none of my patients caught the flu? I then contactedProfessors Reinhold Vieth and Ed Giovannucci and told them of myobservations. They immediately advised me to collect data from allthe patients in the hospital on 2,000 units of vitamin D, not justthe ones on my ward, to see if the results were statisticallysignificant. It turns out that the observations on my ward

alonewere of borderline statistical significance and could have been dueto chance alone. Administrators at our hospital agreed, and arestill attempting to collect data from all the patients in thehospital on 2,000 or more units of vitamin D at the time of theepidemic. Four years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in thevitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it's the only knownprecursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activatedvitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors inenzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D - like all steroid hormones -damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as yourbody requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic _expression inhundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as manypotential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks. Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normalhuman diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day ifyou feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmonfor dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that muchfish are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes oflatitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D containsno naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. governmentrequires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but onlywith what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounceglass. The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins inthe skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, whendermatologists and governments began warning us about

the dangers ofsunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humanshave always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet Bradiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts ofvitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultravioletlight, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements. The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is thedramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and themodern one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units ofvitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderlyor African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humansnormally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summersun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into thecirculation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units,that's the single most

important fact about vitamin D. Compare thatto the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the severalhundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as "AdequateIntake." It's what we call an "order of magnitude" difference. Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shinesdirectly overhead much of the year and where our species must haveobtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spiteof our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racialpigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Evenafter humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidlylightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humansworked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we beganto work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travelinside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather

onsunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lowervitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin Dlevels in modern humans are not just low - they are aberrantly low. About three years ago, after studying all I could about vitamin D, Ibegan testing my patient's vitamin D blood levels and giving themliterature on vitamin D deficiency. All their blood levels were low,which is not surprising as vitamin D deficiency is practicallyuniversal among dark-skinned people who live at temperate latitudes.Furthermore, my patients come directly from prison or jail, wherethey get little opportunity for sun exposure. After finding out thatall my patients had low levels, many profoundly low, I startededucating them and offering to prescribe them 2,000 units of vitaminD a day, the U.S. government's "Upper Limit." Could vitamin D be the reason none of my patients got the flu? Inthe last several years, dozens of medical studies have calledattention to worldwide vitamin D deficiency, especially amongAfrican Americans and the elderly, the two groups most likely to diefrom influenza. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease,depression, chronic pain, depression, gum disease, diabetes,hypertension, and a number of other diseases have recently beenassociated with vitamin D deficiency. Was it possible that influenzawas as well? Then I thought of three mysteries that I first learned in medicalschool at the University of North Carolina: (1) although theinfluenza virus exists in the population year-round, influenza is awintertime illnesses; (2)

children with vitamin D deficient ricketsare much more likely to suffer from respiratory infections; (3) theelderly in most countries are much more likely to die in the winterthan the summer (excess wintertime mortality), and most of thatexcess mortality, although listed as cardiac, is, in fact, due toinfluenza. Could vitamin D explain these three mysteries, mysteries thataccount for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year? Studies havefound the influenza virus is present in the population year-around;why is it a wintertime illness? Even the common cold got its namebecause it is common in cold weather and rare in the summer. VitaminD blood levels are at their highest in the summer but reach theirlowest levels during the flu and cold season. Could such a simpleexplanation explain these mysteries? The British researcher,

Dr. R. Edgar Hope-Simpson, was the first todocument the most mysterious feature of epidemic influenza, itswintertime surfeit and summertime scarcity. He theorized that anunknown "seasonal factor" was at work, a factor that might beaffecting innate human immunity. Hope-Simpson was a generalpractitioner who became famous in the late 1960's after hediscovered the cause of shingles. British authorities bestowed everyprize they had on him, not only because of the importance of hisdiscovery, but because he made the discovery own his own, withoutthe benefit of a university appointment, and without any formaltraining in epidemiology (the detective branch of medicine thatmethodically searches for clues about the cause of disease). After his work on shingles, Hope-Simpson spent the rest of hisworking life studying influenza. He concluded a "seasonal factor"was at work, something

that was regularly and predictably impairinghuman immunity in the winter and restoring it in the summer. Hediscovered that communities widely separated by longitude, but whichshared similar latitude, would simultaneously develop influenza. Hediscovered that influenza epidemics in Great Britain in the 17th and18th century occurred simultaneously in widely separatedcommunities, before modern transportation could possibly explain itsrapid dissemination. Hope-Simpson concluded a "seasonal factor" wastriggering these epidemics. Whatever it was, he was certain that thedeadly "crop" of influenza that sprouts around the winter solsticewas intimately involved with solar radiation. Hope-Simpson predictedthat, once discovered, the "seasonal factor" would "provide the keyto understanding most of the influenza problems confronting

us." Hope-Simpson had no way of knowing that vitamin D has profoundeffects on human immunity, no way of knowing that it increasesproduction of broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides, peptides thatquickly destroy the influenza virus. We have only recently learnedhow vitamin D increases production of antimicrobial peptides whilesimultaneously preventing the immune system from releasing too manyinflammatory cells, called chemokines and cytokines, into infectedlung tissue. In 1918, when medical scientists did autopsies on some of the fiftymillion people who died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they wereamazed to find destroyed respiratory tracts; sometimes theseinflammatory cytokines had triggered the complete destruction of thenormal epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract. It was as ifthe flu victims had been attacked and

killed by their own immunesystems. This is the severe inflammatory reaction that vitamin D hasrecently been found to prevent. I subsequently did what physicians have done for centuries. Iexperimented, first on myself and then on my family, tryingdifferent doses of vitamin D to see if it has any effects on viralrespiratory infections. After that, as the word spread, several ofmy medical colleagues experimented on themselves by taking three-daycourses of pharmacological doses (2,000 units per kilogram per day)of vitamin D at the first sign of the flu. I also asked numerouscolleagues and friends who were taking physiological doses ofvitamin D (5,000 units per day in the winter and less, or none, inthe summer) if they ever got colds or the flu, and, if so, howsevere the infections were. I became convinced that physiologicaldoses of vitamin D reduce the incidence of viral

respiratoryinfections and that pharmacological doses significantly amelioratethe symptoms of some viral respiratory infections if taken early inthe course of the illness. However, such observations are sopersonal, so likely to be biased, that they are worthless science. As I waited for the hospital to finish collecting data from all thepatients taking vitamin D at the time of the outbreak - to see if itreally reduced the incidence of influenza - I decided to researchthe literature thoroughly, finding all the clues in the world'smedical literature that indicated if vitamin D played any role inpreventing influenza or other viral respiratory infections. I workedon the paper for over a year, writing it with Professor Giovannucci of Harvard, Professor Reinhold Vieth of the Universityof Toronto, Professor Holick of Boston University, ProfessorCedric Garland of

U.C., San Diego, as well as Dr. Umhau of theNational Institute of Health, Sasha Madronich of the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research, and Dr. Bill Grant at the Sunlight,Nutrition and Health Research Center. After numerous revisions, wesubmitted our paper to the same widely respected journal where Dr.Hope-Simpson published most of his work several decades ago. Epidemiology and Infection, known as The Journal of Hygiene in Hope-Simpson's day, recently published our paper. The editor, ProfessorNorman Noah, knew Dr. Hope-Simpson and helped tremendously with thepaper. In the paper, we detailed our theory that vitamin D is Hope-Simpson's long forgotten "seasonal stimulus." We proposed thatannual fluctuations in vitamin D levels explain the seasonality ofinfluenza. The periodic seasonal fluctuations in 25-hydroxy-vitaminD levels, which cause recurrent and predictable

wintertime vitamin Ddeficiency, predispose human populations to influenza epidemics. Weraised the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin Ddeficiency in the same way that an unusual form of pneumonia(pneumocystis carinii) is a symptom of AIDS. That is, we theorizedthat Bernard Shaw was right when he said, "the characteristicmicrobe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause." In the paper, we propose that vitamin D explains the following 14observations: 1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the wintersolstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest, 2. Why it disappears in the months following the summer solstice, 3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the

rainyseason, 4. Why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Nino SouthernOscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin Dblood levels, is associated with influenza, 5. Why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated withoutdoor temperatures, 6. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds, 7. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces theincidence of viral respiratory infections, 8. Why Russian scientists found that vitamin D-producing UVB lampsreduced colds and flu in schoolchildren and factory workers, 9. Why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberatelyinfected with a

weakened flu virus - first in the summer and thenagain in the winter - show significantly different clinical coursesin the different seasons, 10. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin Dconsumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter, 11. Why children with vitamin D deficiency and rickets suffer fromfrequent respiratory infections, 12. Why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses ofvitamin D to children who were constantly sick from colds and theflu, found the treated children were suddenly free from infection, 13. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heartattacks in the winter

rather than in the summer, 14. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels,are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are. Although our paper discusses the possibility that physiologicaldoses of vitamin D (5,000 units a day) may prevent colds and theflu, and that physicians might find pharmacological doses of vitaminD (2,000 units per kilogram of body weight per day for three days)useful in treating some of the one million people who die in theworld every year from influenza, we remind readers that it is only atheory. Like all theories, our theory must withstand attempts to bedisproved with dispassionately conducted and well-controlledscientific experiments. However, as vitamin D deficiency has repeatedly been associated withmany of the

diseases of civilization, we point out that it is nottoo early for physicians to aggressively diagnose and adequatelytreat vitamin D deficiency. We recommend that enough vitamin D betaken daily to maintain 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels at levelsnormally achieved through summertime sun exposure (50 ng/ml). Formany persons, such as African Americans and the elderly, this willrequire up to 5,000 units daily in the winter and less, or none, inthe summer, depending on summertime sun exposure. By: J. J. Cannell Acknowldegement: We wish to thank Professor Norman Noah of theLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Scragg of the University of Auckland and Professor Heaney ofCreighton University for reviewing the manuscript and making manyuseful suggestions. -- Dr. Cannell, Atascadero State Hospital, 10333 El CaminoReal, Atascadero, CA 93422, USA, 805 468-2061,jcannell@...<../../../../WAPFchapterleaders/post?postID=k0SobYgZVwEahRcErqYgfCKlT8FY\Dacdz3QFQV7xKGNDVna8WjIy4mcUcimSkEuH_HNyQLSYmDYoev0Um2NQWK16Fb3y>-- Professor Reinhold Vieth, Mount Sinai Hospital, Pathology andLaboratory Medicine, Department of Medicine, Toronto, Ontario,Canada-- Dr. Umhau,

Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies,National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NationalInstitutes of Health, Bethesda, MD-- Professor Holick, Departments of Medicine and Physiology,Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA-- Dr. Bill Grant, SUNARC, San Francisco, CA-- Dr. Sasha Madronich, Atmospheric Chemistry Division, NationalCenter for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA-- Professor Cedric Garland, Department of Family and PreventiveMedicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA-- Professor Giovannucci, Departments of Nutrition andEpidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA http://www.vitamindcouncil.com <http://www.vitamindcouncil.com/> Cannell JJ, Vieth R, Umhau JC, Holick MF, Grant WB, Madronich S,Garland CF, and Giovanucci E. Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D.Epidemiol Infect. 2006 Sep 7;:1-12 (Epub ahead of print)Link Here.Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?>newsid=51913 Sullivan <krapivka> wrote: Karin, i know i've ased u a million time...what brand of vit D and calcium are u taking?bigbird3099 <bigbird3099> wrote: : J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Oct;25(5):395-402. Books, LinkOutVitamin D status in a rural postmenopausal female population.Lappe JM, Davies KM, Travers-Gustafson D, Heaney RP.Creighton University Medical Center, Osteoporosis Research Center, 601 North 30 Street-Suite 4820, Omaha, NE 68131, USA. jmlappecreighton (DOT) eduBACKGROUND: Inadequate vitamin D nutritional status is increasingly recognized as common in North American and

European populations, but the extent of the shortfall and the parameters of the distribution for populations of interest remain uncertain. PURPOSE: To report the distribution of values for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] in a population of rural postmenopausal women, together with quantification of factors related to vitamin D status. SETTING: Nine largely agrarian counties in eastern Nebraska (approximately 41 degrees N). PARTICIPANTS: A population-based sample of 1,179 women 55 years of age and older recruited into a four-year trial of calcium and vitamin D supplementation. METHODS: Baseline biochemical, dietary, and anthropometric measurements obtained on entry into trial. RESULTS: Serum 25(OH)D concentration at baseline varied cyclically with season, with the solar cycle explaining 2.9% of the total variance (P < 0.001). Mean seasonally adjusted 25(OH)D concentration was 71.1 nmol/L. Serum 25(OH)D also exhibited the

expected inverse curvilinear relationship with serum parathyroid hormone (PTH), with the inflection point of the curve located at approximately 80 nmol/L. Supplements containing vitamin D were regularly taken by 59% of the cohort (median dose: 200 IU/d). Nevertheless, approximately 4% of all women had values below the laboratory reference range and more than two-thirds fell below 80 nmol/L. Seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D concentration was positively correlated with the size of daily vitamin D supplement dose, and negatively with age, weight, and body mass index (P < 0.01 for all). In stepwise multiple linear regression models, weight, age, and supplement dose were independently correlated with seasonally adjusted serum 25(OH)D, and together explained 19% of the total variance of adjusted 25(OH)D concentration. Women taking supplements had only one-sixth the chance of having a 25(OH)D value below the reference limit of the

assay, compared to women who did not use supplements. CONCLUSIONS: Approximately two-thirds of this rural population fell below 80 nmol/L, a value considered to be the lower end of the optimal range. Based on the slope of 25(OH)D on supplement dose observed in these women, it would require an additional vitamin D input of nearly 2000 IU/d to reach the goal of an RDA for vitamin D, i.e., to bring 97.5% of the cohort to levels of 80 nmol/L or higher.PMID: 17031008 [PubMed - in process] #define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb)) - Shakespeare Get your email and see which of your friends are online - Right on the new Yahoo.com

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