Vitamin D’s impact on infection
A study led by Harvard researchers of Mongolian schoolchildren supports the possibility that daily vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of respiratory infections in winter. In a report that will appear in the journal Pediatrics and that has received early online release, an international research team found that vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk of respiratory infections among children who had low blood levels of vitamin D at the start of the study. “Our randomized controlled trial shows that vitamin D has important effects on infection risk,” says Carlos Camargo of Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the study’s corresponding author. “In almost 250 children with low blood levels of vitamin D during winter, we found that taking a daily vitamin D supplement cut in half the risk of a respiratory infection.” Camargo is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health and a professor of medicine...