Three different studies published in PUBMED Recently highlight the role of Vitamin D deficiency in the development of Asthma and recurrent respiratory tract infections. Only in recent years has the role of Vitamin D been discovered and researched in relation to non-skeletal importance.

In light of these articles, I think it is prudent and wise for almost all people who live in temperate climates who spend most of their time indoors to supplement with a Vitamin D supplement daily. In particular those who have Asthma or who suffer repeat respiratory infections, like colds, flu etc. during the winter months should definatley be taking a Vitamin D supplement daily in order to prevent any deficiency.

A general maintenance dose for an adult would be in the range of around 5,000iu per day, and for those neding to take it therapeutically like in cases of Asthma, taking as much as 20,000iu daily for a month or two during the winter months in particular would likely confer a great degree of benefit.


Article Links;
Abstract:
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Vitamin D deficiency has been rediscovered as a public-health problem worldwide. It has been postulated that vitamin D deficiency may explain a portion of the asthma epidemic. The purpose of this review is to present the evidence for a role of vitamin D in asthma.

RECENT FINDINGS: Both animal models and studies in human fetal tissues show that vitamin D plays a role in fetal lung growth and maturation. Epidemiologic studies have also suggested that higher prenatal vitamin D intakes have a protective role against wheezing illnesses in young children. Vitamin D may protect against wheezing illnesses through its role in upregulating antimicrobial proteins or through its multiple immune effects. In addition, vitamin D may play a therapeutic role in steroid resistant asthmatics, and lower vitamin D levels have recently been associated with higher risks for asthma exacerbations.

SUMMARY: Improving vitamin D status holds promise in primary prevention of asthma, in decreasing exacerbations of disease, and in treating steroid resistance. However, the appropriate level of circulating vitamin D for optimal immune functioning remains unclear. Because vitamin D deficiency is prevalent even in sun-replete areas, clinical trials are needed to definitively answer questions about the role of vitamin D in asthma.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19365260

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Abstract:
In the 1960s, the prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases began to increase worldwide. Currently, the burden of the disease is more than 300 million people affected. We hypothesize that as populations grow more prosperous, more time is spent indoors, and there is less exposure to sunlight, leading to decreased cutaneous vitamin D production. Coupled with inadequate intake from foods and supplements, this then leads to vitamin D deficiency, particularly in pregnant women, resulting in more asthma and allergy in their offspring. Vitamin D has been linked to immune system and lung development in utero, and our epidemiologic studies show that higher vitamin D intake by pregnant mothers reduces asthma risk by as much as 40% in children 3 to 5 years old. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with obesity, African American race (particularly in urban, inner-city settings), and recent immigrants to westernized countries, thus reflecting the epidemiologic patterns observed in the asthma epidemic. Providing adequate vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy may lead to significant decreases in asthma incidence in young children.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17919705

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Abstract:
Over the past decade, interest has grown in the role of vitamin D in many nonskeletal medical conditions, including respiratory infection. Emerging evidence indicates that vitamin D-mediated innate immunity, particularly through enhanced expression of the human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide (hCAP-18), is important in host defenses against respiratory tract pathogens. Observational studies suggest that vitamin D deficiency increases risk of respiratory infections. This increased risk may contribute to incident wheezing illness in children and adults and cause asthma exacerbations. Although unproven, the increased risk of specific respiratory infections in susceptible hosts may contribute to some cases of incident asthma. Vitamin D also modulates regulatory T-cell function and interleukin-10 production, which may increase the therapeutic response to glucocorticoids in steroid-resistant asthma. Future laboratory, epidemiologic, and randomized interventional studies are needed to better understand vitamin D's effects on respiratory infection and asthma.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19063829

After reading this article, I have been thinking that it would be prudent for Asthmatics to ensure adequate intake of Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin E in particular - as well as Vitamin D which has been shown in other studies to be linked to Asthma prevalence.

Intake for Vitamin A from Supplements should be only from Retinol and could be taken at 25,000iu per day.

Additional Vitamin C should be taken only as Acerola powder, so as to ensure that the Vitamin C is in the natural form and best absorbed and utilized by the body.

Vitamin E can be taken in supplemental form but only in the natural "D Alpha Tocopheral" Form and not DL which is synthetic.

Taking these nutrients together will ensure that a person has the best chance of supplying the lungs with the nutrients they need in order to prevent inflammation in response to any immune system challenges, fatigue as a result of exercise or exertiion, or any irritants which may trigger Asthma episodes.

 
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Is Asthma One of the Vitamin Deficiency Diseases Posted on April 6, 2010 in Deficiency


According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16.4 million adults and 7 million children suffer from Asthma in the United States . Researchers from Nottingham University have found out that Asthma is one among the vitamin deficiency diseases. The results of their findings are published in the journal Thorax. This article tries to gain further insight on this topic.

What Research Has to Say on Asthma as One of the Vitamin Deficiency Diseases:

• The researchers found that low levels of Vitamin A and C can increase the risk of Asthma.
• The study involved review of 40 research articles relating vitamins and Asthma from 1980 to 2007.
• People with Asthma were found to have lower intake of Vitamin A than the people without this chronic inflammation of lungs.
• Severe Asthma patients were found to have relatively less intake of Vitamin A than mild Asthma patients.
• The difference of intake of Vitamin A between the severe and mild patients was found to be around 50 percent.
• When intake of Vitamin C was studied, it was found that people with insufficient amount of this vitamin in their body are at 12 percent higher risk of developing Asthma when compared to people who take sufficient amount of this vitamin in their diet.
• Vitamin E also played a role in increasing the risk of Asthma.
• However, it was interesting to know that severe patients had low levels of this vitamin when compared to the mild patients.
• Severe Asthma patients took 20 percent less vitamin E than the recommended daily intake of this vitamin.
• In a research article published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, it was stated that children with severe Asthma had low levels of Vitamin D when compared to children suffering from mild Asthma.

These observation made by the researchers compel us to believe that Asthma can be included in the list of vitamin deficiency diseases.

This is a very interesting article which points to a significant link between antibiotic use in early life and the development of Asthma later on.

The article doesn't mention specifically the mechanism by which this link is made, but I suspect that one of the reasons for this connection would be because of the destruction of the beneficial bacteria population in the bowel of the child, which normally would confer significant benefits to the immune system.

It has been shown that probiotics (the healthy bacteria normally present in the digestive tract) are able to stimulate the immune system directly, they also produce various substances that are beneficial to the immune system and provide a barrier against infection to a large degree. Other recent studies are showing a whole new understanding of the immune system and have been discovering that about 80% of our innate immunity actually comes from our gut. So when that barrier and the probiotic population is disrupted there are many different consequences.

Without probiotics, the person's immune defenses are much reduced, which explains why once kids get on an antibiotic taking cycle it is very hard to break, because they tend to get repeat infections over and over and require more and more antibiotics as their own immune defenses are not able to mount an effective immune response to overcome the infection themselves.

In addition the connection between development of Asthma and antibiotic use would suggest that the child's immune system is already very low, hence the development of other infections that would require antibiotic use in the first place. The weakened system, most likely due to nutritional deficiencies, would be more susceptible also to developing asthma later on, which has been shown in other studies to possibly be the result of nutritional deficiency.

In light of these findings, if your child has had to take antibiotics in the first year of life already, it is a good signal that you need to do some extra work to stimulate his immune system and provide additional nutritional support in order to overcome his natural weakness, which should help to prevent further diseases down the road.

Ensuring adequate intake of Vitamin's A and D as well as a general multi vitamin would be the first step. Then also replacing the child's probiotic poplulation which would have been disrupted due to antibiotic intake would be the second important step. Ensuring your child eats a healthy diet that is very limited in sugar and other refined carbohydrates would also help, as sugar and refined carbs have been shown to weaken the immune system considerably, and they also feed candida albicans growth which is a harmful yeast that also lives in the gut, but begins to take over, causing candida infection, when it has too much carbohydrate which it feeds on.

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Increased Risk of Childhood Asthma From Antibiotic Use in Early Life Anita L. Kozyrskyj, PhD; Pierre Ernst, MD and Allan B. Becker, MD

From the Faculty of Pharmacy (Dr. Kozyrskyj), University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada; the Division of Clinical Epidemiology (Dr. Ernst), Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada; and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health (Dr. Becker), Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Correspondence to: Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, 210 Pharmacy Building, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T 2N2; e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Background : To address the major methodological issues of reverse causation and selection bias in epidemiologic studies of antibiotic use in early life and the development of asthma, we undertook a cohort study of this association in a complete population of children.

Methods : Using the health-care and prescription databases of Manitoba, Canada, this longitudinal study assessed the association between antibiotic prescription use during the first year of life and asthma at age 7 years in a 1995 birth cohort of 13,116 children.

Results : Independent of well-known asthma risk factors, asthma was significantly more likely to develop in children who had received antibiotics in the first year of life at age 7 years. The association with asthma was observed for antibiotic use in non-respiratory tract infections (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02 to 3.37). The risk of asthma was highest in children receiving more than four courses of antibiotics (adjusted OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.14 to 1.88), especially among rural children, and in the absence of maternal asthma or a dog in the birth year. Broad-spectrum (BS) cephalosporin use was more common in these subpopulations of children.

Conclusions : Antibiotic use in early life was associated with the development of childhood asthma, a risk that may be reduced by avoiding the use of BS cephalosporins.

http://vran.org/health-risks/anaphylaxis-allergies-and-asthma/increased-risk-of-childhood-asthma-from-antibiotic-use-in-early-life/