COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, is a growing public health problem. According to the November 2006 issue of the "Public Library of Science Medicine," there were at the time 210 million people suffering from COPD worldwide. By 2020, the World Health Organization predicts that COPD will rise from the sixth to the third leading cause of death, next only to cardiovascular disease and cancer. There is evidence that vitamin D is both protective against COPD and can alleviate symptoms.
COPD and Vitamin D
COPD is characterized by irreversible airflow limitation in the lungs. The hallmark symptom is lung tissue riddled by holes caused by inflammation-fighting enzymes. Emphysema is a type of COPD in which tiny air sacs are destroyed by these enzymes. According to researchers reporting in the December 2005 issue of "Chest," vitamin D inhibits production of the enzymes. The researchers examined vitamin D levels in relation to lung function in 14,000 Americans and found that both COPD patients and healthy people with normal vitamin D levels breathed more easily and more deeply than did people with deficient levels.
Deficiency
Smoking is a major cause of COPD, and researchers reporting in the March 2010 issue of "Thorax" tested vitamin D levels in 414 former smokers to investigate a link between vitamin D status and COPD. They noted that the majority of COPD patients awaiting lung transplants were deficient, and that over 50 percent of COPD patients in an earlier study were vitamin D deficient. In this study, the researchers found that 262 of the former smokers had COPD and all were vitamin D deficient. In conclusion, the authors wrote that vitamin D supplementation is warranted in patients with severe COPD.
Forced Expiratory Volume
Forced expiratory volume is a measurement of the volume of air that can be forced out after taking a deep breath. In COPD, the disease causes air to be expelled in smaller amounts as the disease progresses. Researchers reporting in the June 2011 edition of "Thorax" examined the total vitamin D dietary intake of 2,997 men and women aged 59 to 73 years in relation to how much air they could expel. They found that the higher the dietary intake, the better they performed on forced expiratory volume tests. The researchers called for controlled studies investigating the same correlation in COPD patients.
Urgent Need
According to researchers in the June 2011 issue of "Vitamins and Hormones," the "burning question" is whether prevention of vitamin D deficiency or its supplementation can reverse the course of COPD. Vitamin D and its deficiency are intricately involved in many of the pathogenic mechanisms of COPD and its severity increases proportionately with the severity of deficiency. The authors described several of the chemical and biological pathways by which vitamin D supplementation may benefit patients. They concluded there is urgent need for controlled trials to investigate the efficacy of vitamin D for reversing the disease's progression.
References
- "Public Library of Science Medicine"; Projections of Global Mortality and Burden of Disease from 2002 to 2030; Colin Mathers and Dejan Loncar; November 2006
- "Chest"; Relationship Between Vitamin D and Pulmonary Function; Peter Black and Robert Scragg; December, 2005
- "Thorax"; Vitamin D Deficiency is Highly Prevalent in COPD and Correlates with Variants in the Vitamin D-binding Gene; Wim Janssens et al.; March 2010
- "Thorax"; Relationship of Vitamin D Status to Adult Lung Function and COPD; Seif Shaheen et al.; June 2011
- "Vitamins and Hormones"; Vitamin D Deficiency and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Vicious Circle; Wim Janssens et al.; June 2011
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