Hopefully the auto-loader at the bottom will pick some previous posts here about calcium, vitamin D and allergy; these may be necessary for the background of a new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine last week

We looked for Cav1 channel expression in Th2 and Th1-cells by real-time PCR and Western blotting. We sequenced the isoforms expressed by Th2-cells and tested whether Cav1 antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (Cav1AS) affected Ca2+ signaling and cytokine production [...] mouse Th2 but not Th1-cells expressed Cav1.2 and Cav1.3 channels. Th2-cells transfected with Cav1AS had impaired Ca2+ signaling and cytokine production, and lost their ability to induce airway inflammation upon adoptive transfer.

This highlights again the close connection of the calcium system to immunology. While the earlier
TRPM4 story was basically about mast cells, we now arrived at Th2 cells, yea, yea.

This week the journal “Allergy” printed a report of three cases where allergic sensitization in preterm infants is attributed to the human milk fortifier Similac.

The product contains: Nonfat milk, corn syrup solids, whey protein concentrate, and MCT oil (fractionated coconut or palm kernel oil) as sources of proteins, fat, and carbohydrate (Abbott Laboratories Pediatric Nutritional Products Guide, DIR/98A08, 2008, Mississauga, Canada).

Not listed above but in the Products Guide are 120 IU/100 ml D3 which may indeed function as a sensitizer.

Having been approached by a GP about a rising interest of high dose vitamin D therapy (that a German website praises as a panacea for all kind of diseases) it took me some time to recall a recent IARC monograph.
Sure, it’s all about the correct dose, while excess vitamin supplementation may even kill people. Here is what the IARC says about 100,000 IU vitamin D daily: (Show me more…)

A new allergy study published last month

hypothesized that prenatal vitamin D supplementation could induce tolerogenic DC at birth. To evaluate this hypothesis in an epidemiological setting, we quantified the gene expression levels of ILT3 and ILT4 in cord blood (CB) samples of a population-based birth cohort of farm and reference children.

ILT3/IL4 as a marker of tolerogenic DCs may be justified by data published by Chang but not by newer data (Show me more…)

Our most recent paper is online now. Although not even listed in Pubmed, it seems to be already highly accessed ;-) Have fun and sorry for the two typing errors there.

Of course the submission statistics there are misleading; I submitted it last year while publication has been delayed by moving the journal to an Open Source platform.

The BAMSE study group published another vitamin paper – mainly on current multivitamin use and allergy.

Our results …. suggest that supplementation with multivitamins during the first years of life may reduce the risk of allergic disease at school age.

Any further conclusion on early exposure of vitamin D, however, is probably impossible for 3 simple reasons: (Show me more…)