Front Immunol: New Discoveries! Vitamin D may improve the body's immune response to tuberculosis!

Recently, an article published in the international journal Frontiers in Immunology titled "Reduced vitamin D-induced cathelicidin production and killing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in macrophages from a patient with a non-functional.
" Vitamin D receptor: A case report, scientists from the University of Copenhagen and other institutions found that vitamin D may help improve the body's immune response
to tuberculosis.

Researcher Martin Kongsbak-Wismann said that in this study, we found for the first time that vitamin D may improve the immune system's ability to
fight against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Researchers are expected to prove this association in a particular patient who was born with a specific mutation that could prevent his body from responding to vitamin D, a mutation that occurs in a very small number of people, with about 200 cases of mutations reported
worldwide 。 The researchers compared the cells of the woman's body with those of the patient who could absorb vitamin D, revealing the differences between the two; It was found that the immune cells of patients who could absorb vitamin D were more likely to resist tuberculosis, and in female patients, vitamin D did not produce any effect, and their bodies did not respond
to vitamin D at all.

Antibiotics are currently available to treat TB, but in the past, many TB patients were often sent to nursing homes and asked to lie outside in the sun, which may have contributed to the rise of vitamin D levels in the body, so researchers have long speculated that vitamin D may help fight tuberculosis, but until now they have no direct evidence
.
The researchers hope the study will draw the attention of scientists to the fact that vitamin D therapy can be used as a useful tool to prevent and treat tuberculosis
in humans.
It may be a good idea to give vitamin D to people with high exposure to TB infection, such as certain populations in African countries, even if we still don't know how different levels of vitamin D affect the risk of infection and the severity of the disease, but at least it won't cause any negative side effects
.
However, even if you take vitamin D supplements, you may still develop tuberculosis
.

New Discoveries! Vitamin D may improve the body's immune response
to tuberculosis.

Image source: Frontiers in Immunology (2022).
DOI:10.
3389/fimmu.
2022.
1038960

If you are exposed to infection, the body's immune system will try to fight off Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and vitamin D will also strengthen part of the body's immune system, but if you inhale a large number of Mycobacterium tuberculosis particles or other parts of the immune system are not functioning properly, then you may still get tuberculosis, even if the body's vitamin D levels are normal at this time, so vitamin D may not be a miracle drug, but it does have some benefits
。 More specifically, the results of this study show that female patients produce lower levels of antimicrobial peptides, natural toxins found in the body's lung immune cells that help fight tuberculosis, and in most patients infected with tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis attacks immune cells
in the lungs.

Immune cells can help fight off infections caused by phagocytosis bacteria, but Mycobacterium tuberculosis also develops a variety of evasion mechanisms that reduce the body's ability of immune cells to ingest and kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis
.
Researchers say you could argue that Mycobacterium tuberculosis has developed a way to trick immune cells to sleep, allowing the disease to hide in the host body's immune cells so that the rest of the immune system can't see it
.
This may be where vitamin D comes into the picture, because vitamin D counteracts the inhibitory effects
of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by allowing immune cells to produce more antimicrobial peptides.

Antimicrobial peptides are like a tiny needle, which can pierce Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and when it does so, it weakens the inhibitory effect of bacteria on immune cells, thereby restoring the ability of immune cells to kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis; In the immune cells of healthy control participants, vitamin D may improve the ability of cells to resist Mycobacterium tuberculosis, while in the immune cells of female patients, the researchers did not observe its response to vitamin D, suggesting that vitamin D is a key factor
in the immune system's ability to fight off Mycobacterium tuberculosis and prevent tuberculosis.
(Biovalley Bioon.
com)

Original source:

Fatima A.
H.
Al-Jaberi,Cornelia Geisler Crone,Thomas Lindenstrøm, et al.
 Reduced vitamin D-induced cathelicidin production and killing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in macrophages from a patient with a non-functional vitamin D receptor: A case report, Frontiers in Immunology (2022).
DOI: 10.
3389/fimmu.
2022.
1038960