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A daily vitamin D supplement may halve the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), say Kassandra Munger and colleagues at Harvard School of Public Health (US):

• The supplement needed to be at least 400 international units (iu)
• No significant reduction of risk was found with high vitamin D3 levels in food

Kassandra cautioned that further work was needed. The link they had discovered had been between vitamin D3 taken in mult-ivitamin pills so it was impossible to say that it was definitely vitamin D3 alone which had done the trick.

Their study analysed the diets across 20 years of the 187,563 women participating in Harvard’s 'Nurses’ Health' studies.

Ed.- This study from America lends weight to other research into a link between the “sunshine vitamin” vitamin D3 and MS. This has suggested that people living closer to the equator are at less risk compared to those living at more distant latitudes.

View Vitamin Research Products' vitamin D3 1,000iu supplement

Australian researchers at the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Centre for Population Health Research compared the average daily childhood exposures to the sun of 136 people with multiple sclerosis and 272 healthy controls matched on gender and year of birth. They found that those with the highest average exposures to the sun (2-3 hours a day) during weekends and holidays between the ages of six and fifteen years had been a third less likely to develop multiple sclerosis.

Exposure during the winter months had beenmore significant than during the summer.

Ed.- The effect is almost certainly due to the sun’s ability to trigger the body’s production of vitamin D3.

That low vitamin D3 levels in the body increase the risk of developing multiple sclerosis has been suggested by several studies. A new study supports those findings, in that it found that children with MS who had higher blood serum vitamin D3 levels also benefited from lower relapse rates. Specifically, for every 10 nanogram per litre increase in their blood serum vitamin D3 level the child's rate of subsequent relapse decreased by just over a third (34%).

• The study covered 110 children with MS
• The researchers suggested that the finding made the case for supplementing with vitamin D3