VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY IN NON-SKELETAL DISEASES: MORE THAN JUST A COEXISTENCE??

Dr. Rinini Dastidar* & Miss Tirna Halder

ABSTRACT

Vitamin D deficiency (VDD) has emerged as a global epidemic in recent time across the world. Emerging evidences indicated a close link of VDD with non-skeletal diseases including diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cardiovascular disease and malignancies. The immunological role of vitamin D is the current focus of researchers and clinicians in addition to its traditional role of bone mineral homeostasis. The protective role of 1,25(OH)2D3 has been demonstrated in the prevention of various autoimmune diseases like hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis in numerous studies. The manifestation of vitamin D deficiency remains assymptomatic in most of the cases or bound to skeletal diseases, so its importance in the pathogenesis of metabolic disorders remain ignored till today. Rampant increase of metabolic diseases is of growing concern in India, so VDD should be considered in this context due to its close association with them. The contribution of vitamin D deficiency in the underlying mechanism of sixteen non-skeletal diseases and the prospect of routine vitamin D supplementation in the delay or prevention of these diseases have been elaborately discussed in this review.

Keywords: VDD, DM, HTN, CKD, autoimmune diseases.