In April 2005 an influenza epidemic swept through the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane where Dr. John Cannell worked. All wards became infected except the one where John worked, despite the intermingling of both patients and nurses. In this ward a study was under way which involved the patients had been taking a daily vitamin D3 supplement of 2,000 international units (iu).

Further research led John to the work of R. Edgar Hope-Simpson who, in 1981, proposed that a ‘seasonal stimulus’ intimately associated with solar radiation explained the remarkable seasonality of epidemic influenza.

Knowing that ...

• solar radiation was also responsible for seasonal vitamin D3 production in the skin
• volunteers inoculated with live attenuated influenza virus during the winter months were more likely to develop fever and serological evidence of an immune response than volunteers inoculated during the summer
• vitamin D3 deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections.
• vitamin D3 supplementation and exposure to both natural and synthetic (sun lamp) ultraviolet B light reduces their incidence

... John concluded that there was probably a link. In September 2006, he and other vitamin D experts [1] proposed that ...

Vitamin D3 (actually a steroid hormone called 1,25(OH)2D) is central to the efficient function of the human immune system. In particular, it dramatically boosts the production of powerful anti-microbial peptides, which exist in natural killer cells and in the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract, where they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection.

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They believed that this may explain:

• why flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D3 levels are at their lowest, and disappears in the months following the summer solstice
• why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season
• why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin D3 blood levels, is associated with influenza
• why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated with outdoor temperatures
• why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds
• why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D3) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections
• why children with vitamin D3 deficiency and rickets suffer from frequent respiratory infections
• why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D3 consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter
• why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter than in the summer
• why African Americans, with their low vitamin D3 blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than White Americans
• why Russian scientists found that vitamin D3-production triggering UVB lamps reduced colds and flu in school children and factory workers
• why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberately infected with a weakened flu virus - first in the summer and then again in the winter - show significantly different clinical courses in the different seasons
• why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses of vitamin D3 to children who were constantly sick from colds and flu, found the treated children were suddenly free from infection

Ed.- (i) Given the poor record of mass immunisation against flu, and the mounting evidence of benefits from adequate vitamin D3 levels in the blood, a high quality 1,000iu supplement would seem a wise move.

(ii) Shortly after the epidemic, a study [2] showed that vitamin D3 was a potent antibiotic which worked by increasing the body’s production of proteins called antimicrobial peptides. Antimicrobial peptides destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi and viruses, including the influenza virus.

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