Vitamin D is related to fasting glucose and may have both inhibitory and stimulatory effects on nuclear factor <em>kappa</em>-B in healthy normoglycaemic adults  — ASN Events
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Vitamin D is related to fasting glucose and may have both inhibitory and stimulatory effects on nuclear factor kappa-B in healthy normoglycaemic adults  (#262)

Aya Mousa 1 , Negar Naderpoor 1 , Karly Sourris 2 , Josephine Forbes 3 , Barbora de Courten 1
  1. Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  3. Mater Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Objective:  Growing evidence has suggested that low vitamin D is related to increased chronic-low grade inflammation, which is thought to play an important role in the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of vitamin D on glucose homeostasis and inflammatory markers, including its effect on nuclear factor kappa-B (NFκB) activity in healthy normoglycaemic individuals. We hypothesized that NFκB and plasma inflammatory markers downstream of NFκB as well as plasma glucose would be negatively associated with plasma vitamin D levels.

Methods: We measured circulating vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D3), waist to hip ratio (WHR), body mass index (BMI), fasting and 2hr glucose tolerance (OGTT), white blood cell count, circulating CRP, IL6, MCP-1, TNF-alpha levels (ELISA), and NFκB activity in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC, DNA-binding assay) in 49 healthy, non-diabetic adults [28F/21M, age 31±10y and BMI 28.4±4.6, ranging between 21 and 41 (mean ± SD)].

Results: Mean vitamin D level was 48±24.5 nmol/L with no significant differences between genders or BMI scores (p>0.1). After adjusting for age, gender, BMI and WHR, vitamin D levels were significantly negatively associated with fasting glucose (r=-0.47, p=0.000), but not 2 hr glucose (r=-0.14, p=0.3). Vitamin D levels also had a significant positive association with NFκB activity in PBMC (r=0.52, p=0.000) and a significant negative association with MCP-1 (r=-0.4, p=0.01), but no association with the other plasma inflammation markers measured (all p>0.1).

Conclusions: Although previous in-vitro studies reported that vitamin D has an inhibitory effect on NFκB activity, our novel cross-sectional data from a cohort of healthy normoglycaemic individuals suggest that vitamin D may have both inhibitory and stimulatory effects on the NFκB pathway. Large-scale human intervention studies are needed to further investigate the effect of vitamin D on NFκB and inflammatory pathways and to determine its effects on the etiopathogenesis of type 2 diabetes.