TB to Be Recovered With Heavy Dosage Of Vitamin D

For many years before antibiotics became usually available, sunshine was implemented to treat tuberculosis, with affected individuals often being sent to Swiss clinics to soak up the sun's curing rays. Now, for the very first time scientists have indicated how and why heliotherapy might, indeed, guide a difference.

A study led by researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, conducted in cooperation with the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research, has shown that high dosages of vitamin D, given alongside antibiotic treatment, arrive at help affected individuals with tuberculosis (TB) recover more rapidly.

The research, which should be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), will be the first to enquire the effect of vitamin D on the immune results of affected individuals receiving treatment for a contagious disease. The findings implies that high doses of the vitamin can reduce through body's inflammatory reaction to infection, letting affected individuals to get better faster, with less harm for their lungs.

Alongside stimulating recovery in TB affected individuals, the authors say their results recommend that vitamin D supplementation could help affected individuals recover better from different diseases an example would be pneumonia.

Dr Martineau said finally it was probably too early to be endorsing that all TB affected individuals must take high-dose vitamin D as well as the standard antibiotic therapy for the disease; more research that have affected individuals was needed before clinical recommendations could possibly be made. "We hope to do more work to consider the results of higher doses and different kinds of vitamin D to find out if they have a more great effect," Dr Martineau said.