600,000 IU of Vitamin D (total) allowed previously weak immune systems to fight off a virus antigen

Created December 2020

Vitamin D3 replacement enhances antigen-specific immunity in older adults

Emma S Chambers, Milica Vukmanovic-Stejic, Carolin T Turner, Barbara B Shih, Hugh Trahair, Immunotherapy Advances, ltaa008, https://doi.org/10.1093/immadv/ltaa008

Gabriele Pollara, Evdokia Tsaliki, Malcolm Rustin, Tom C Freeman, Neil A Mabbott, Mahdad Noursadeghi, Adrian R Martineau , Arne N Akbar

* This study used 6,400 IU of vitamin D daily for 14 weeks to restore the immune system enough to fight off the Zoster virus. * Many studies have observed that Vitamin D fights the enveloped virus which causes COVID-19 * Vitamin D can inhibit enveloped virus (e.g. Corona, Herpes, Bird Flu, Epstein, Hepatitis, RSV, etc.) – March 2011 * Risk of enveloped virus infection is increased 50 percent if poor Vitamin D Receptor - meta-analysis Dec 2018 * * * studies are in both Virus and Vitamin D Receptor categories** COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos {include} Note: 70% of the trials are using 100,000 IU of vitamin D in the first week - want to improve the immune system in a week, Cannot wait 14 weeks --- 1. Loading Dose of Vitamin D = large total dose over 1 day to 60 days {include}

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Ageing is associated with increased number of infections, decreased vaccine efficacy and increased systemic inflammation termed inflammageing. These changes are reflected by reduced recall responses to varicella zoster virus (VZV) challenge in the skin of older adults. Vitamin D increases immunoregulatory mechanisms and has the potential to inhibit inflammageing. Since vitamin D deficiency is more common in the old and has been associated with frailty and increased inflammation. Therefore we investigated the use of vitamin D3 replacement to enhance cutaneous antigen-specific immunity in older adults (≥65 years).

We showed that that older adults had reduced VZV-specific cutaneous immune response and increased non-specific inflammation as compared to young. Increased non-specific inflammation observed in the skin of older adults negatively correlated with vitamin D sufficiency. Therefore, vitamin D3 replacement was investigated to determine if it could improve VZV-specific cutaneous immune responses in older adults. Vitamin D insufficient older adults (n=18) were administered 6400IU of vitamin D3/day orally for 14 weeks. Antigen-specific immunity to VZV was assessed using transcriptional analysis of skin biopsies collected from challenged injection sites pre- and post-vitamin D3 replacement. We showed that vitamin D3 supplementation significantly increased the response to cutaneous VZV antigen challenge in older adults. This enhancement was associated with a reduction in inflammatory monocyte infiltration with a concomitant enhancement of T cell recruitment to the site of antigen challenge in the skin.

In conclusion vitamin D3 replacement can boost antigen-specific immunity in older adults with sub-optimal vitamin D status.

Supplementary Data

ltaa008supplSupplementaryFigure1 - pdf file

ltaa008supplSupplementaryFigure2 - pdf file

ltaa008supplSupplementaryFigureLegends - docx file

ltaa008supplSupplementaryTable1 - docx file

ltaa008supplSupplementaryTable2 - xlsx file

ltaa008supplSupplementaryTable3 - xlsx file

Tags: Immunity Seniors Virus