A daily vitamin D supplement could help reduce the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a study has found.
Encompassing two conditions – Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – IBD causes inflammation of the digestive tract, leading to severe pain, diarrhoea, exhaustion and weight loss.
It is believed to be driven, in part, by the immune system reacting to normally harmless bacteria in the gut.
The condition is usually managed with medications that reduce inflammation, alongside lifestyle adjustments or, if it has caused serious damage in the digestive tract, surgery.
More than half a million Britons suffer with the disease – a figure that has increased by 30 per cent in the past decade.
But experts at the Mayo Clinic in Florida say vitamin D supplements may provide a simple solution.
The body creates vitamin D from sunlight on the skin.
In a trial, patients with inflammatory bowel disease who were given the tablets over a 12-week period saw their symptoms decrease.
A daily vitamin D supplement could help reduce the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a study has found (file image)
Dr John Mark Gubatan, the study’s lead author and gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic, said: ‘We wanted to see if vitamin D could control the way the immune system communicates with gut bacteria in patients with IBD.’
Blood and stool samples were collected before and after 48 participants received vitamin D supplements, and analysed for immune responses within the gut microbiome.
After 12 weeks, the researchers found that the participants’ protective immune responses had improved, while their gut inflammation had decreased.
Their levels of regulatory immune cells that are responsible for controlling inflammation also rose.
The researchers suggest that vitamin D supplementation may help prevent the immune system from attacking the gut microbiome, reducing symptoms of IBD.
They added that while vitamin D supplementation guidelines advise usage for bone health and calcium metabolism, it could have benefits of mediating the immune system and gut microbiome in IBD patients.
- A previous version of this article reported that vitamin D may help ease symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. In fact, the research relates to symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease. The article has been amended to reflect this.
