said the Denver Post giving a nice overview of vitamin D research. This was just 1 day too early for a fascinating nature immunology paper (scienceblog:doi:10.1038/ni1433:) that links for the first time natural sunlight induced vitamin D action on dendritic cells. Seems that D3 will influence homing of T cells – we are again at “Licht und Leben“, yea, yea.

Addendum

• Don´t miss the nice talk by Dr. Vieth at insinc
• D3 induced Th1 block will allow Th17 action that is credited for causing and sustaining tissue damage
• D3 induces cathelicidin in another study.
• Deutschlandradio reported the vitamin D – allergy story on Feb 10, 2007.

In October 2007, PLoS Medicine together with 100 other journals will publish a special issue devoted to poverty and human development – details are at Gavin Yamey’s blog.

Yesterday I heard for the first time of this psychology term. It describes how humans cope with stress, anger or other negative events – even over long time periods. Some people give up but others still grow (“skipjacks”). Seems that this trait can be immedately tested in scientists ;-) there is even a journal Disaster.

Some of you may remember the fake food hypothesis that relates the obesity epidemic to the introduction of highly processed industrial food. JCI now has a nice review on the satiation signal and the complex system that may be disturbed.
Microbe content might also be important in this context click | click | click, however, even the adoptive transfer might be a secondary effect – everything in biochemistry follows mass equilibrium constants. The poorer resorption in the lean may lead to a different colonialization and vice versa. Will the adoptive transfer really show lasting effects longer than 2 weeks (in the mouse study)? Isn´t colonialization not influenced by diet (in the human study)?

Yea, yea.