Vitamin D reduces risk of diabetes

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ISLAMABAD: Giving young children vitamin D supplements may reduce risk of developing type-1 diabetes later in life, a research suggests.

Children who took supplements were around 30% less likely to develop the condition than those who did not. Type-1 diabetes results from immune system destruction of pancreatic cells which produce hormone insulin.

The study, by St Mary’s Hospital for Women and Children, Manchester, appears in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The type-1 diabetes is most common among people of European descent with around two million Europeans and North Americans affected.

It is becoming increasingly common and it is estimated the number of new cases will rise by 40% between 2000 and 2010. The Manchester team pooled data from five studies examining the effect of vitamin D supplementation. Not only did the use of supplements appear to reduce the risk, the effect was dose dependent – the higher and more regular the dose, the lower the likelihood of developing the disease. A previous research has found people newly diagnosed with type-1 diabetes have lower concentrations of vitamin D than those without the condition. Studies have also found type-1 diabetes is more common in countries where exposure to sunlight – which enables the body to manufacture vitamin D – is lower.

For instance, a child in Finland was 400 times more likely to develop the disease than a child in Venezuela. Separate research has linked low levels of vitamin D and sunlight to other autoimmune disorders including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Further evidence of vitamin D’s role comes from the fact that pancreatic beta cells and immune cells carry receptors or docking bays for the active forms of the vitamin. It is thought that vitamin D helps to keep the immune system healthy and may protect cells from damage caused by chemicals which control inflammation.

Dr Victoria King, of the charity Diabetes UK, said: “Much more research, in particular controlled trials which compares the results when one group of people are given vitamin D supplements and one group is not, are needed before we can confirm a concrete association between vitamin D and type 1 diabetes.”

Tumour growth block hopes raised: Scientists have discovered a key part of chemistry which makes cancer cells so dangerous. They believe it could now be possible to tamper with the mechanism and stop tumour growth in its tracks.

Harvard Medical School identified an enzyme which enables cancer cells to consume huge quantities of glucose they need to fuel uncontrolled growth. Writing in nature, they describe how starving cancer cells of the enzyme curbed their growth. The key enzyme, pyruvate kinase, comes in two forms, but the Harvard team found that only one – the PKM2 form – enables cancer cells to consume glucose at an accelerated rate.

When they forced cancer cells to switch to other form of pyruvate kinase in the lab by knocking out production of PKM2, their growth was curbed. When the cells were injected into mice, they were much less able to produce tumours.

Breast cancer may be deadlier in heavy women: Breast cancer patients who are overweight have more aggressive disease and are likely to die sooner, US researchers reported.

A dangerous type of breast cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, was seen in 45 percent obese patients, compared with 30 percent overweight patients and 15 percent healthy weight patients. “The more obese a patient is, the more aggressive the disease,” said Dr Massimo Cristofanilli of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, who led the study.

“We are learning the fat tissue may increase inflammation that leads to more aggressive disease,” he added. Writing in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, Cristofanilli and colleagues said they studied 606 women with breast cancer that had spread within the breast. They classified them according to body mass index or BMI, a globally accepted measure of obesity. People with BMIs of below 25 are considered normal, while 25-29 marks overweight and 30 or above is clinically obese.

After five years, 56.8 percent obese women and 56.3 percent overweight women were still alive. But 67.4 percent of normal weight women had survived.

More than 56 percent women of normal weight survived 10 years compared to 42.7 percent obese women and 41.8 percent overweight women. “Obesity goes far beyond just how a person looks or any physical strain from carrying around extra weight. Particular attention should be paid to overweight patients, Cristofanilli said.

Many studies have shown obese have a greater risk of several types of cancer. Last month, British researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal obesity could double the risk of leukaemia, multiple myeloma, thyroid, colon and kidney cancers. Fat cells produce a range of hormones that could fuel cancer, researchers say.