A large clinical trial has shown that vitamin D supplements can lower the risk of autoimmune disease.
Autoimmune diseases are diseases in which the immune system misinterprets its own organs, tissues, and cells as foreign substances and attacks them. Rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, celiac disease This includes.
This fact was confirmed as a result of a large-scale clinical trial conducted by Dr. Karen Costenbader, a rheumatologist at Harvard University School of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and 25,871 men and women over the age of 50 (mean age 67). Health Day News and News Medical Life Science reported on the 27th.
The trial participants were not vitamin D deficient at the start of the trial and had no autoimmune disease risk factors.
The research team divided them into a 2,000 IU vitamin D supplement group and a placebo group, and a 1 g omega-3 fatty acid group and a placebo group, and compared and analyzed the incidence of autoimmune disease over 5.3 years.
As a result, the vitamin D group had a 22% lower incidence of autoimmune disease than the control group, and the omega-3 group had a 15% lower rate than the control group.
In particular, this effect of vitamin D supplementation began to become noticeable two years after the start of the clinical trial, and it became even greater by the fifth year.
The research team explained that vitamin D activates several functions performed by the immune system by binding to receptors on immune cells.
In general, it is recommended to consume 600 IU of vitamin D per day for adults under the age of 69 and 800 IU per day for adults over 70 years of age.
The researchers plan to follow up the development of autoimmune diseases in trial participants for several more years.
The findings were published in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
