A Dr. Cannell triggered the investigation into this new role for Vitamin D, when he put a puzzlingly lower rate of flu in a group of men under his control, together with a report that Vitamin D upregulates white blood cells. "First, the ward below mine was quarantined, then the wards on my right, left, and across the hall," Cannell recalls. However, although the 32 men on his ward at Atascadero (Calif.) State Hospital had mingled with patients from infected wards before their quarantine, none developed the illness.
An enlightened pyschiatrist, he had been correcting a deficiency of that Vitamin in his group with supplementation.
Science News reports in an article headed "The Antibiiotic Vitamin": "On the basis of more than 100 articles that he collected, Cannell and seven other researchers now propose that vitamin D deficiency may underlie a vulnerability to infections by the microbes that cathelicidin targets. These include bacteria, viruses, and fungi, the group notes in a report available online for the December Epidemiology and Infection. "
Krispin Sullivan CN - comprehensive article on Vitamin D - emphasizes the importance of TESTING your levels of D when supplementing or exposing yourself to the sun. Information on which test to request is also given.
