Strokes might be treated as well as prevented by vitamin D – Jan 2011

Vitamin d supplementation: a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of strokes.

Curr Drug Targets. 2011 Jan 1;12(1):88-96.
Pilz S, Tomaschitz A, Drechsler C, Zittermann A, Dekker JM, März W.
Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Nuclear Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Austria. stefan.pilz@chello.at.

Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent due to lifestyle and environmental factors which limit sunlight induced vitamin D production in the skin.
This "pandemic" of vitamin D deficiency is of concern because low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) have been associated with cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, infectious, autoimmune and malignant diseases.

Epidemiological studies have largely but not consistently shown that vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for strokes.
This is supported by associations of low 25(OH)D levels with cerebrovascular risk factors, in particular with arterial hypertension.

Vitamin D has also been shown to exert neuroprotective, neuromuscular and osteoprotective effects which may reduce cognitive and functional impairments in poststroke patients.

Hence, the current literature favours the notion that vitamin D supplementation is a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of strokes but accurate data from interventional studies are missing. Randomized controlled trials are therefore urgently needed to evaluate whether vitamin D supplementation reduces the incidence of strokes and improves the outcome of poststroke patients.

We do, however, believe that currently published data on the multiple health benefits of vitamin D and the easy safe and inexpensive way by which it can be supplemented already argue for the prevention and treatment of vitamin D deficiency in order to reduce stroke associated morbidity and mortality. PMID: 20795935

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Abstracts from this Special Issue of Current Drug Targets at VitaminDWiki

• Vitamin D: evolutionary, physiological and health perspectives Holick
• Vitamin d supplementation: a promising approach for the prevention and treatment of strokes
• Vitamin d biology in heart failure: molecular mechanisms and systematic review
• Vitamin d deficiency: universal risk factor for multifactorial diseases?
• Vitamin d in atherosclerosis, vascular disease, and endothelial function
• Editorial on Vitamin D deficiency– Current Drug topics – Jan 2011

See also VitaminDWiki

• All items in Stroke and vitamin D 131 items