A recent Johns Hopkins study revealed that when mice with multiple sclerosis (MS) were given high doses of vitamin D, the neurodegenerative symptoms associated with the condition, reduced.
In MS, an autoimmune condition, primed T cells migrate to the central nervous system where they can damage the protective sheath of nerves called myelin leading to debilitating symptoms such as blurred vision, weakness and numbness. It is known that Vitamin D boosts the immune system and in this case it blocks the migration process of the damage causing immune cells.
“With this research, we learned vitamin D might be working not by altering the function of damaging immune cells but by preventing their journey into the brain,” says study leader Anne R. Gocke, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
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