Vitamin D and Immune Health

The “sunshine vitamin”, Vitamin D, is now widely recognized for playing a crucial role in immune health, along with its well known effects on calcium and bone homeostasis.

How does Vitamin D help regulate Immune Function?

Vitamin D acts as an immune system modulator and has shown in studies to prevent excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines and increases the ‘oxidative burst’ potential of macrophages that kill bacteria.

Vitamin D is involved in stimulating the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides, which exist in neutrophilis, monocytes, natural killer cells, and in the epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract where they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection.

What are the dangers of Vitamin D deficiency?

Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with increased risk for autoimmune and infectious disease (Vanherwegen et al 2017).

Epidemiological and observational studies have demonstrated a link between Vitamin D deficiency and risk of developing respiratory diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and tuberculosis (Hejazi et al 2016).

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to decreased lung function, which may compromise the body’s ability to fight respiratory infections (Zosky et al. 2011) (Beyhan-Sagmen et al. 2017)

Vitamin D is critical for proper immune function and a deficiency may increase risk for infection and disease.