Why vitamin D is important to prevent illness

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Ten recent bits of research about vitamin D: - In a study of 1,739 Boston residents in 2006, Harvard Medical School researchers reported earlier this year that people deficient in vitamin D face up to twice the risk of a heart attack or stroke as those with higher levels. - Women taking 400 units of vitamin D a day have a 40 percent lower risk of multiple sclerosis, according to the Harvard Nurses Health Study in Neurology in 2004. - Harvard Medical School researchers in 2007 found that a higher maternal intake of vitamin D during pregnancy may decrease the risk of asthma in early childhood. - Vitamin D deficiency early in pregnancy is associated with a fivefold risk of preeclampsia, according to a 2007 study from the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. - In 2004, McGill University in Canada showed that vitamin D can trigger an immune system response that can kill the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis. - Researchers at University of California San Diego's Moores Cancer Center reported in 2007 that people with low vitamin D levels had twice the risk of colon and breast cancer as those with high levels. - In 2007, a four-year, randomized study followed 1,179 healthy postmenopausal women who took daily doses of calcium plus 1,100 units of vitamin D and determined a 60 percent reduction in breast cancer risk compared with women on calcium alone of placebos. - In 2007, the Harvard School for Public Health reported a link between low levels of vitamin D and prostate cancer in two-thirds of 1,500 men studied. - The Archives of Internal Medicine in 2007 reported that people with low levels of vitamin D have a higher risk of myocardial infarction. - A 2008 study from UC San Diego's Moores Cancer Center found that vitamin D supplementation during infancy was associated with a 29 percent reduction in Type 1 diabetes.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)