Healthy Living News Revealed

Healthy Living News Revealed!

So much is going on in the world of health and sometimes its just hard to keep up with the new facts and discoveries. You may just want to keep up with health related news simply because it will benefit you or someone you know.

Revealing Newsletter about Vitamin D

Vitamin D has a significant effect on over 220 genes someof which have been associated with Crohn's disease andtype 1 diabetes, according to UK and Canadian researchers.

The research, published in Genome Research, found 2776'binding sites' where vitamin D attached to the genome, manyof which were concentrated around genes that have beenlinked to autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosisand rheumatoid arthritis and diseases such as colorectalcancer and lymphocytic leukaemia.

The researchers said the findings backed the role of vitamin Din maintaining health in a world where one billion people areestimated to be vitamin D deficient due to either diet or lackof sunlight.

"There is now evidence supporting a role for vitamin D insusceptibility to a host of diseases," said researchers from theWellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.

"Vitamin D supplements during pregnancy and the early yearscould have a beneficial effect on a child's health in later life.Some countries such as France have instituted this as aroutine public health measure."

The researchers isolated fragments of DNA bound tovitamin D receptors (VDRs), treated them with vitamin Dform calcitrol, and then sequenced the DNA fragments.

VDRs are proteins activated< by vitamin D that attach toDNA and influence which proteins are made from humangenetic code.

In this way they identified the 2776 vitamin D binding sites,which illustrated the importance of vitamin D in geneexpression.

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council(MRC), the MS Society, the Wellcome Trust and the MSSociety of Canada and conducted by the University of Oxford.

"Vitamin D status is potentially one of the most powerfulselective pressures on the genome in relatively recent times.Our study appears to support this interpretation and it may bewe have not had enough time to make all the adaptations wehave needed to cope with our northern circumstances,"explained the researchers, in reference to skin shade andsunlight exposure ratios.

Source:'A ChIP-seq defined genome-wide map of vitamin D receptorbinding: associations with disease and evolution'

Genome ResearchPublished in Advance August 24, 2010