Category Archives: Vitamins

Vitamins

Is there any environmental conditioning of vitamin D metabolism?

So far, I haven’t seen so much work about epigenetic regulation of vitamin D. There was already a paper in 2005 that showed how treatment with the

methylation inhibitor 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine together with the deacetylation inhibitor trichostatin A resulted in elevation of both CYP27B1 and CYP24 mRNA expression demonstrating that even in normal human prostate cells expression of Vitamin D hydroxylases may be under epigenetic control

Continue reading Is there any environmental conditioning of vitamin D metabolism? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 1.03.2008, access 17.10.2025
Allergy, Vitamins

Severe flaw in mouse allergy studies

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A report in Biospektrum 07.07/13:762 about the production of endotoxin free ovalbumin by a German company now reveals that nearly all commercially available ovalbumin preparations are highly contaminated with endotoxin. Company A included 723, company B 1038, company C 257 and company D 342 EU/mg LPS. As all mice are usually also on a vitamin D supplement diet, recent mouse studies may have produced largely artifacts if both – agonist and antagonist – are included in an uncontrolled manner, yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 1.03.2008, access 17.10.2025
Genetics, Vitamins

Blue eyes

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A nice study in Hum Genet by Eiberg hit the public press (and the blogosphere 1|2). Although I agree with most commentators that this is a sound study with a bit antiquity dust in the methods, I am unsure if I should believe the main conclusion of a founder mutation Continue reading Blue eyes →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 15.02.2008, access 17.10.2025
Allergy, Vitamins

Parascience in nature medicine?

I wonder about the title of a new nature medicine editorial

Breathing easier with breast milk

It is not so much the unwanted analogy to aspiration; the paper simply hasn´t to do anything with breathing. It is a poor narrative of a concomittant NM article repeating many of its prejudices. Although the authors would like to let you belief that they have discovered allergen transfer into breast milk, this is known Continue reading Parascience in nature medicine? →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 14.02.2008, access 17.10.2025
Allergy, Vitamins

Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange

This Byron quotation is taken from the foreword of Selye “Calciphylaxis” 1962 and may help to introduce the followup story on the question who described for the first time vitamin D as cofactor in the allergic sensitization process. Continue reading Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 9.02.2008, access 17.10.2025
Video, Vitamins

A secosteroid transcriptional activator

A new vitamin D review is more serious about the biology and possible outcomes than some others.

The popular press is talking about vitamin D as “The Sunshine Vitamin”, promoting it as capable of reducing the risk of cancers and autoimmune disease. Yet vitamin D is actually a secosteroid transcriptional activator, at the heart of the innate immunity.

This looks trivial but it isn´t if you look at the NEJM paper Continue reading A secosteroid transcriptional activator →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 1.02.2008, access 17.10.2025
Allergy, Vitamins

Hans Selye: Ancestor of the allergy vitamin hypothesis

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I spent a lot of time in libraries verifying bibliographic lists as I expected that somebody else could have had the idea of allergy induction by vitamin D before — in particular when being closer to the introduction of vitamin D supplements. Fortunately Science Magazine now offers a fulltext search of their archives (what is currently not possible with old Nature volumes). I could locate about 70% of the computer hits when searching manually the Science index for vitamin and hayfever. The loss of about one third could be mainly attributed to the fact that extra supplement pages have only occasionally preserved in the libraries that I have visited for this project (Marburg, Berlin, München STABI + TUM, Garching). Text recognition is also limited, so my results may be preliminary.

What I found this afternoon in the library at TUM Garching Continue reading Hans Selye: Ancestor of the allergy vitamin hypothesis →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 14.12.2007, access 17.10.2025
Genetics, Vitamins

First 25OH-D3 GWA online

The first genomewide association for vitamin D serum levels is already online as the Framingham people told me earlier this day, many thanks!

d3gwa.png

There are 3 important regions on the above figure figure: around rs1394615, rs1877165 and rs2160595, see also the attached excel sheet fram25ohdexam6or7agesexadj.xls.

What are the reasons that my linkage study arrived at completely different regions? The accompanying BMC Genetics paper even highlights 2 different SNPs: rs1048516 + rs10507577). Anyway, the best region in my opinion is on chromosome 6. Here are the significant SNPs in relation to their neighboring genes: Continue reading First 25OH-D3 GWA online →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 19.11.2007, access 17.10.2025
Genetics, Vitamins

You may fool all the people some of the time

Nature news reports an unpublished meta analysis of Cesarean section and asthma risk. The authors interpret the outcome in the light of the hygiene hypothesis: unhygienic siblings, risky! Normal delivery, risky!! No early bullshit, risky!!!
Again, delivery mode may be a proxy for physician contact and iatrogenic causes. Having heard today also lectures that take the hygiene hypothesis for granted, the old adage comes to my mind:

You may fool all the people some of the time. You can even fool some of the people all of the time. But you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf 12.11.2007, access 17.10.2025