Vitamin D deficiency is why you get flu
By Linda on Oct 1, 2010 in Food | comments(0)
Full article: http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Nutrition/Vitamins/vitamin_d_deficiency_is_why_you_get_flu_0703100554.html
Excerpt:
A new study led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen has confirmed that vitamin D plays an important role in activating immune defenses against infectious diseases like flu.
Vitamin D deficiency has already been linked to a wide spectrum of diseases including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, autoimmune disease and many others.
The study published in the latest edition of Nature Immunology discovers that activation of T-cells to fight infections needs definite help from vitamin D.
Carsten Geisler and colleagues, study authors, explained the role vitamin D plays in the immune responses as follows.
First when the naive T cell recognizes foreign invaders like bacteria or viruses with T cell receptor (TCR), it sends activating signals (1) to the vitamin D receptor gene. The VDR gene then starts producing DVR protein, which binds vitamin D in the T cell (3) and becomes activated. Then the vitamin D bound and activated DVR gets into the cell nucleus and activates the gene for PLC-gamma1 (5), which in turn produces PLC-gamma1 protein (6) and “the T cells can get started”.
