Mechanism suggests a potential new path toward pharmaceutical treatment of MS, as well as therapies for other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, eczema and psoriasis.
For years scientists have noted an association between levels of vitamin D in a person’s body and the person’s ability to resist or minimize the effects of multiple sclerosis (MS) but didn’t understood the mechanism involved. Until now.
New breakthrough research by a collaborative team at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School and Stanford indicates that vitamin D directly terminates the production of a disease-causing protein.
As the investigators outline in their report, published in the September issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology (“1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 ameliorates Th17 autoimmunity via transcriptional modulation of interleukin-17A” ):
• During MS (“EAE” in mice), a damaging protein called interleukin-17 (IL-17) is produced by immune cells in the brain.
• The research team found that after vitamin D binds to its receptor, the receptor parks itself on the gene that encodes IL-17.
• By doing so, the vitamin D receptor occupies a site normally reserved for a protein called NFAT, which is required to turn the IL-17 gene on.
• The gene stays off and IL-17 levels plummet.
• At the same time, the vitamin D receptor turns on another gene, whose product generates suppressive T cells that combat the destructive action of their IL-17-producing counterparts.
According to the researchers, led by UMDNJ Prof. Sylvia Christakos, PhD, the mechanism they identified suggests what might be a new path toward pharmaceutical treatment of MS, as well as therapies for other autoimmune diseases that might include rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, eczema and psoriasis.
Source: ProHealth Copyright © 2011 ProHealth, Inc. (17/08/11)
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Why is the site all about big pharma and dosing folk with what is a poison.
Where is the natural route to the production of a vitamin our body manufacturers from food stuffs and from light and I include artificial lumen.
And where are the self tests, does the blogger back-up there want to use synthetic substances that are technically rat poison.
See no mention of the origins of man made vitamin D. Nor the requirement of a blood test to establish facts.
Another question are you requesting vit d for production of calcium?
Shine on Scotland, shine a light on it.
In which way is this poison, Vitamin D is naturally attained in our bodies through sunlight, Just like any other vitamin it is produced in our own bodies and we can take supplements to gain boosts to our natural bodily functions and immune system. You ask for self tests, there are companies out there who sell and provide these kits. Or even better go and ask your GP to test your vitamin D levels so we can use this data to further studies. We do not support the ‘big pharma’ and never have. By saying Vitamin D is a poison your saying that evolution and life itself is revolved around toxicity. Studies have shown that Vitamin D is essential not only to increasing day to day immunity but also to the very back bone of life DNA. Vitamin D can turn genes on and off and has over 200 hundred binding sites on the genome itself.
Im not a blogger, im a campaigner who has fought to get the voice of Multiple Sclerosis sufferers heard. But not for themselves – at least not yet – Vitamin D is known to prevent multiple sclerosis and those who have already been blighted by this complex neurological disease, fight with a wild glint in their eye, because they wish that no matter what their children and even strangers suffer through the horrific agony and anguish themselves.
Ryan