As always, a longer literature search prevents from new discoveries… Here comes a nice piece from 1952 on the antagonistic effect of LPS on vitamin D (Is that really LPS or did I interpret it wrong?). Although not included in my recent review on vitamin D and allergy – I attributed the effect to Lyakh et al. – here is the first description of this effect. Continue reading A factor in hay prevents vitamin D action
Although there are numerous reports and even whole schools of thought building on a prenatal origin of allergy, a new study now clearly states that sensitization does not develop in utero. IgE traditionally measured in cord blood IgE is a contamination of maternal IgE. The authors show that there is a correlation with IgA and the “spurious specific IgE” at birth “vanishes” during the following 6 months. If you ever had a cord in hand, you will understand how easily contamination occurs.
The “prenatal origin” party doesn’t give up basically with the arguments:
The authors explain the maternal/fetal association “by maternal inheritance of atopic IgE responsiveness on chromosome 11q and other gene loci” BUT unfortunately there is neither atopic IgE responsiveness on chromosome 11q nor is there any evidence of imprinting. So – according to our best evidence allergy starts only after birth. To convince me it would not need 922 neonates but 1 B cell of proven fetal origin that makes IgE – making the whole story at least a good example how insufficient methods produce doubtful conclusions, yea, yea.
As filaggrin – one of our best atopy genes – is vitamin D dependent, I tried to find out more about epidermal differentiation. The plot here summarizes an earlier review:
There seems to be a clear calcium gradient with the expression of differentiation specific marker in the single strata. So there is some good chance that filaggrin effects may be modified by external vitamin D supply.
For everybody who wants to follow up the most recent discussion about allergy promoting effects of vitamin D here is a short summary. The Harvard group basically wrote three articles that were immediately contradicted. The comment on the first article in JACI was by a NIH researcher Continue reading Vitamania
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?
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.
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
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?
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
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
Sorry, I have no permission to reproduce any of the photos here but you can check the links below for some cod liver oil photos
nightmare | double use | evil woman.
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
I have just completed an ultra short letter to JACI on a confusing vitamin D article Continue reading A, then E, then B, then D, and then again E
He leaves the lab at 5pm sharp – as a news feature about Shizuo Akira now tells us. This is remarkable as many of us believe that we need to work 80 hours a week. Much happens just by chance – as may be seen even with most-cited paper (of another vitamin researcher…)
A new paper in the EJCN examines genetic and non-genetic factors influencing vitamin D serum levels. The authors find 24% of the variability explained by season & intake Continue reading Genetics of 25-hydroxy D3