During my recent trip to London, I could get a brief glimpse into the 1932 book “Vitamin D” by Reed, Struck and Steck. As this volume is not available in a German library and as it was not allowed by the British library to travel, I took now the lengthy procedures of registering, waiting in the queue, before searching this book for any allergy related items.
It seemed to be worthwile, although with some unexpected results:
Vitamin D was not tested as a risk factor but as a cure of allergy! Table 26 shows an individual time course.
These data are somewhat difficult to interpret but I cannot see any effect with the current episode being mainly externally triggered. Table 13 furthermore summarized some animal experiments where mainly the series 3 and 4 are interesting.
Again, I do not see something exciting here, given the experimental condition where vitamin D and allergen is not given at the same time. Another key sentence is on page 311:
Rappaport and collaborators have issued three reports on the use of excess vitamin D in the treatment of hay-fever and asthma, involving several hundred subjects and extending over four seasons. As an experienced allergist he evaluated the results as significantly beneficial in 92 percent of cases. There was some strong synergy between the vitamin and pollen desensitization. Extensive metabolic studies did not reveal the mechanism of action of the vitamin affecting protection against pollinosis.
Again, this is somewhat unexpected but maybe in line with some contemporary research of adult allergy desensitization. On the other hand page 214 reports what I expected
An interesting investigation of this problem was undertaken by Uno, who employed rachitic rabbits and compared their reactions to those hypervitaminized with vigantol … Both conditions intensified active and passive anaphylactic reactions.