Heena Sharma Blog

Vitamin D, commonly known as the "sunshine vitamin", can combat tuberculosis (TB) bacteria found in the lungs of people with multi-drug resistant TB, according to latest research. The study showed that when added to antibiotic treatment, vitamin D was found to treat TB specifically in patients with multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. The vitamin D supplementation was also found to be safe at the doses administered, with no links to serious adverse events, findings further revealed in the European Respiratory Journal. "Multi-drug resistant TB is on the rise globally. It's notoriously difficult to treat, and it carries a much worse prognosis than standard TB," said Lead Researcher Adrian Martineau, Professor from Queen Mary University of London. "Our study raises the possibility that vitamin D -- which is very safe and inexpensive -- could benefit this hard-to-treat group of patients by taking a novel approach to their treatment," said Martine

Apart from building healthy bones, vitamin D also may reduce cancer risk as well as breast cancer mortality, especially in women with a lower body mass index. Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women worldwide and is the leading cause of death from cancer in women. Reproductive risk factors such as early onset of puberty, late menopause, later age at first pregnancy, never having been pregnant, obesity, and a family history have all been shown to be associated with breast cancer development. The role of vitamin D concentration in the development of breast cancer, however, continues to be debated. Researchers involved in the study concluded that postmenopausal women had an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency at the time of their breast cancer diagnoses, associated with higher rates of obesity than women of the same age group without cancer. Read Complete Article