Vitamin D plays an important role in the fight against infections
Tuberculosis is a lethal infectious disease affecting the lungs and causing up to 2 million deaths annually worldwide. It is transmittable through the bacteria called "Mycobacterium Tuberculosis" and its most common victims are persons with a low level of immunity.Another interesting aspect of this disease is that it is prone on affecting more people with darker skin which is why Africa is one of the most affected areas of the world.
Starting from this premise, researchers believe that the explanation for this issue would be that people with darker skin produce a higher amount of melanin which reduces the production of vitamin D in their bodies.
Vitamin D is very important for our bodies because, besides the help it provides with the bone development for children, it can also help in providing protection against cancer and help fight infections.
The research team discovered that the white blood cells, which have a very important part in the immunity system development, produce a protein (interferon-g) which helps trigger the infected cells to attack the bacteria. This whole process consumes large amounts of vitamin D.
After comparing blood samples taken from healthy patients which had a sufficient amount of vitamin D in their bodies, the scientists found out that the infected cells were not triggered to attack the bacteria as it was the case for patients with sufficient amount of vitamin D. When researchers added to the treatment of the patient, high amounts of vitamin D, the immune response started to activate.
After providing this surplus of vitamin D, there was a reduction with up to 85% of the tuberculosis bacteria and the production of interferon-g was sufficient in the presence of vitamin D.
The findings of this research are very important not only for developing new and more effective treatments for patients suffering from tuberculosis, but also for the conclusion that studying new medicines for this disease on mice is not an effective process because mice do not obtain vitamin D from the sun, like humans do so, their system fights this disease in a different way than humans.
The research was conducted by an international team formed of scientists from the United States, Korea and Germany.
