Genetics Research Supports Role of Vitamin D

It is likely that Genes and other environmental factors influence a person's susceptibility to MS . One of the environmental factors that has been implicated in MS and other autoimmune disease, such as type 1 diabetes, is vitamin D deficiency. In people with these disease it has been found that they have lower levels of vitamin D in the blood than people without MS. Pre-vitamin D is produced in the skin. In the kidney, skin and immune cells, it is converted into its active form by the enzyme coded by the gene called CYP27B1.

This study suggests that active vitamin D increases the suppressive function of regulatory immune cells. The MSRA-funded Australian and New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (ANZgene) also published evidence to suggest that the region in which CYP27B1 sits is associated with MS susceptibility. Both sets of results lend further to the role of vitamin D in MS.

Source: PubMed