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Day in Health
by Lisa Collier Cool
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Researchers have launched the worlds first large, definitive clinical trial to find out if vitamin D supplements can stave off type 2 diabetes in people at high risk for the disease. About 20 US medical centers are participating in the National Institutes of Healthfunded trial, known as the D2d study, which will include some 2,500 volunteers with prediabetes, a problem affecting 79 million Americans. Without an effective intervention, about 10 percent of people with prediabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes each year, reports Anastassios Pittas, MD, co director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts Medical Center, who has received a grant of more than $40 million over five years from the NIH as part of the D2d study. In the double-blinded clinical study, prediabetic participants ages 30 and older will be randomly assigned to take 4,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D3 or a placebo. Their health will be tracked for about four years. New strategies are urgently needed to halt the diabetes epidemic, which now affects nearly 26 million Americanswith about 1.9 million new cases diagnosed each year, according to the American Diabetes Association. Rates have been rising in tandem with the obesity epidemic.
little as 7 cents per pillmight be helpful. For example, Dr. Pittas and colleagues reported in a 2012 study that prediabetic patients with the most vitamin D in their blood had lower risk for progressing to type 2 diabetes, even when lifestyle interventions known to cut the threat, such as weight loss, exercising more, and eating a better diet were taken into account. Ample amounts of the sunshine vitamin are linked to dramatic drops in risk for both type 1 and 2 diabetes. Compared to people with the most vitamin D in their blood, those with the least are 50 percent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, according to a meta-analysis of 16 studies published earlier this year in Clinical Chemistry. High levels of vitamin D have an even more potent effect on risk for type 1 diabetes (an autoimmune disease). A 2012 study found that people with vitamin D levels of 17 nanograms or less per milliliter of blood had more than triple the risk for type 1 versus those with levels above 40. While these and other studies show a strong correlation between vitamin D and lower diabetes risk, they dont establish causation. In other words, there is no proof that the sunshine vitamin prevents diabetes. Facing Diabetes Head On: Tips to Help You Cope
may fight diabetes, continues Dr. Pittas, who has been researching links with both forms of the disease for more than a decade. I became intrigu ed with this association after learning that rates of type 1 diabetes rise as you move further from the equator. This geographic pattern also holds true for other autoimmune conditions, leading many researchers to hypothesize that sunshine, which sparks the body to produce vitamin D, may be protective. However, there could also be other reasons, cautions Dr. Pittas. For example, people who live close to the equator tend to have a healthier lifestyle than those in northern countries where people exercise less and eat a Western diet. Incredible Tattoos Inspired by Diabetes