VITAMIN D AND MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

VITAMIN D AND MULTIPLE SCLEROSISTuesday Dec 19, 2006
CHICAGO (AP) -- It's some of the best evidence yet that vitamin-D can help prevent multiple sclerosis. Researchers who studied seven million people have found that an abundance of vitamin-D seems to help prevent the nerve-damaging disease.
They found that white members of the U.S. military with the highest blood levels of vitamin-D were 62% less likely to develop MS than people with low levels. No such connection was found in blacks or Hispanics - possibly because there were so few in the group studied. Also, the body makes vitamin-D from sunlight, and the skin of blacks and other dark-skinned ethnic groups doesn't absorb sunlight as easily as pale skin.
The research, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, echoes smaller studies that looked at why MS has historically been more common in people who live farther from the Equator, in areas where there is less-intense year-round sunlight.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
AP-NY-12-19-06 1710EST