Cape Town - Many Capetonians are at risk of a Vitamin D deficiency during winter, making it harder for them to fight disease and infection, a new international study has found.
The study was published last month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research, carried out in the Mother City in 2013, was conducted by a team of six scientists from University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University and Pennsylvania State University in the US.
Vitamin D plays a vital role in immune response, and a deficiency can make it harder for the body to combat disease and fight infections like HIV.
The study’s authors said that many Capetonians receive little ultraviolet B radiation – a form of sunlight that helps humans produce Vitamin D – during the cold winter months.
The authors say because Cape Town is far from the equator it has a “seasonal ultraviolet B regime”.
The study’s authors set out to investigate whether high dose Vitamin D supplements during winter could improve health by reversing Vitamin D deficiencies.
They found this to be the case, saying that supplements taken during winter may even help slow down HIV progression in infected people.l
To investigate the rate of Vitamin D deficiency among Capetonians, researchers recruited 100 adults aged between 18 and 24 from Khayelitsha and Bellville.
People with darker skin pigmentation are known to be more likely to be Vitamin D deficient, requiring a greater amount of UVB exposure to make the vital vitamin.
The study said that both groups exhibited vitamin D deficiency during the winter, with women, on average, having a greater deficiency than men.
As the amount of Vitamin D the subjects received from their diets did not change from summer to winter, the authors found that the Vitamin D deficiency was caused by a lack of ultraviolet B radiation.
After some of the test subjects were given Vitamin D supplements for six weeks, three-quarters of them were found to have “optimal vitamin D status”.
“The results suggest that vitamin D supplementation may prevent winter anaemia and boost white blood cell count,” UCT said in a media release, adding the vitamin could “possibly (serve) as a cost-effective intervention to reduce risk of HIV infection and slow down HIV progression in infected individuals,”
In conclusion, the study’s authors suggested that Vitamin D supplements could prolong the time before HIV-positive Capetonians needed to start taking antiretroviral therapy (ART), as well as enhancing the beneficial effects of the ART.
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Weekend Argus