| | Dr. Liu and colleagues at UCLA, publishing in this March's edition of the prestigious journal Science, showed that vitamin D might be, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Vitamin D increases the body's production of naturally occurring antibiotics: antimicrobial peptides. Antimicrobial peptides are produced in numerous cells in the human body where they directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of viruses and bacteria, including tuberculosis. Furthermore, Liu showed that adding vitamin D to African American serum (African Americans have higher rates of TB) dramatically increased production of these naturally occurring antibiotics.
Science. 2006 Mar 24;311(5768):1770-3.
Plenty of you have e-mailed me that high (pharmacological) doses of vitamin D (1,000 to 2,000 units per kg per day for three days), taken at the first sign of influenza, effectively reduces the severity of symptoms. However, has anyone ever studied giving 100,000, 200,000, or 300,000 units a day for several days to see if vitamin D induces antimicrobial peptides to help fight other life-threatening infections? (By the way, doses up to 600,000 units as a single dose are routinely used in Europe as "Stoss" therapy to prevent vitamin D deficiency and have repeatedly been shown to be safe for short-term administration.) No, you say, studies of "Stoss" therapy in serious infections have never been studied or reported in reputable journals. Well, maybe such treatment has been studied - and reported in the best journals - by way of the weirdest medical invention ever patented in the USA.
Before I get into that, I want to compliment the English for their sense of fair play. Last month I pointed out that the English discovered activated vitamin D (calcitriol) before the Americans. It's important because I suspect the Nobel Committee will get around to awarding a Prize for vitamin D sometime in the next several decades, especially if vitamin D turns out to function like an antibiotic. Well, I got an email from an English scientist who pointed out that it was an American who first discovered calcitriol - but none of the ones I listed. He pointed out that Dr. Tony Norman was actually the first to discover calcitriol - in a series of experiments starting in 1968. Too often, we only think of Dr. DeLuca's and Dr. Holick's lab when we think of vitamin D, while Dr. Norman's lab at UC Riverside is overlooked. He has authored 486 papers about vitamin D beginning in 1963 when he was a student in Dr. DeLuca's lab. (By the way, Dr. DeLuca also trained Dr. Holick as he has many vitamin D researchers) When a Nobel Prize is awarded, how will they choose? I don't know - perhaps they should all share it. I do know that I love the English sense of fair play.
J Biol Chem. 1968 Aug 10;243(15):4055-64.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1969 Jan;62(1):155-62.
J Biol Chem. 1970 Mar 10;245(5):1190-6.
Before I get into this, be warned that what follows is bizarre. It might not make much sense in the beginning. However, if you'll bear with me, you'll see where I'm going. Remember how Professor Reinhold Vieth has written about the complete absence of studies using pharmacological doses of vitamin D (100,000 to 300,000 units a day for several days) in serious diseases. Are there frequently fatal illnesses, such as peritonitis (generalized infection in the abdominal cavity), septicemia (infection of the blood), pneumonia (the Captain of the Men of Death), etc, in which pharmacological doses of vitamin D may be clinically useful when added to conventional treatment?
We know that vitamin D has profound effects on human immunity. Quite recently, three independent groups have reported that vitamin D triggers the release of these powerful natural antibiotics called antimicrobial peptides. If you gave someone large doses of vitamin D, would their bodies make large amounts of antimicrobial peptides?
Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand). 2003 Mar;49(2):277-300.
J Immunol. 2004 Sep 1;173(5):2909-12.
FASEB J. 2005 Jul;19(9):1067-77.
Science. 2006 Mar 24;311(5768):1770-3.
Knott EK. Development of ultraviolet blood irradiation. American Journal of Surgery 1948; 76(2): 165-171.
So what ended research on ultraviolet blood irradiation in the United States? First, more antibiotics became available, with much improved results (that was before many bacteria developed resistance to antibiotics). Second, Knott's proposed mechanism of action - directly killing bacteria in the irradiated blood or sterilization of the blood - was proven wrong. When you think about Knott's reasoning, it never made any sense. Only a small portion of the blood volume is irradiated so bacteria in the un-irradiated blood would be free to reproduce inside the body. No, direct sterilization of the blood was never a reasonable mechanism of action. However, without a viable mechanism of action, the procedure was doomed, at least in America.
J Bacteriol. 1944 Jan;47(1):85-96.
Archives of Physical Medicine 1948;19:358-65
Another critical study was funded in part by the American Medical Association and appeared in its journal. Again, they found that blood irradiation didn't sterilize the blood. They also administered Knott hemo-irradiation to 68 patients with a wide range of diseases and found it safe, but ineffective, although none of the treated patients died. Although the JAMA article was its death knell in the USA, the authors concluded with the sentence, "A longer and more extensive program of study is warranted before in vivo ultraviolet irradiation of blood can be finally either accepted or rejected."
After its death in the USA, the Germans revived it, then the Russians. One of the German studies was exceptionally well controlled, finding ultraviolet blood irradiation compared favorably to infrared and sham ultraviolet blood irradiation as well as whole-body skin irradiation - which will produce physiological amounts of vitamin D. Therefore, if it works by a vitamin D mechanism, it is producing pharmacological amounts of vitamin D. To this day, it remains a treatment modality in Russia where it is often added to standard treatment of severe infections. Russian scientists have reported it helps improve standard treatment of numerous infections including tuberculosis, just what the UCLA group recently suggested about vitamin D. I've only included the few Russian studies with abstracts; hundreds more have been published without abstracts, so many my wife refuses to read anymore of them to me.
Perhaps I've lost my mind and need to see one of my psychiatric colleagues. Another possibility is that pharmacological doses of vitamin D (via hemo-irradiation) have been tested in life-threatening infections and found to be safe and remarkably effective, first in the USA, then in Germany and finally in Russia. We will never know until the Food and Nutrition Board starts living in the 21st Century. Their Upper Limit of 2,000 units a day effectively prevents vitamin D researchers from testing pharmacological doses of vitamin D, while drug manufacturers test pharmacological doses of vitamin D analogs all the time.
What we really need are some intrepid volunteers, some readers interested in donating their body to science. The study would be simple. Just contact one of the alternative health care providers on the website listed below this paragraph and see if they use the German made, Euphoton® EN 600 NT hemo-irradiator. If so, arrange for a course of ultraviolet blood irradiation. But have your 25(OH)D levels checked the day before you begin treatment and again about a week after the course of treatment is finished. Then we will know if Dr. Knott was - and Dr. Cannell is - out of their minds. Actually, if I had a serious infection, I wouldn't hesitate taking 200,000 units of vitamin D a day for three days, but I wouldn't have my blood irradiated on a bet.
John Cannell, MD
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