Short and long arms Wikipedia
A study done, by the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford in the UK, is interesting in that it shows more multiple sclerosis (MS) patients are born in the spring than in any other month.
Faculty of fMedicine, an online service that helps people stay informed of medical literature, reviewed a paper published in Neurology that suggests that this seasonal effect is connected by the gene HLA-DRB1*15 allele, an allele is a specific location of a gene.
The study of MS patients from Canada, Sweden and Norway show that this allele is more common among patients born in the spring and Emmanuelle Waubant and Ellen Mowry, two of fMedicine faculty members, say that the study was "unique in its attempt to understand how genes and environment interact in MS."
The study shows there is a correlation between birth month, genetics and risk of MS, but what is unsure of as of yet is how it is all regulated.
The paper published states: "Whether the environmental factor that interacts with DRB1*15 genotype is vitamin D status, which fluctuates throughout the year in parallel with ultraviolet light levels and also appears to be associated with MS risk, is unknown," but this possible vitamin D connection with spring births, genetics and risk of MS will require further study.
Previous studies done by the authors have shown that with people who carry the gene variant, a lack of vitamin D during early life may weaken the ability of the thymus, an organ that provides T-cell maturation, to stop the T-cells that then attack the patient. This leads to a loss of myelin on nerve fibers in the brain.
Because of these studies, Dr Sreeram Ramagopalan, one of the studies authors, believes that taking vitamin D supplements during pregnancy may reduce the risk of a child developing MS in later life.
The fMedicine faculty members, Waubant and Mowry, have said this study may direct preventative and therapeutic treatments through the understanding of environmental risks and the interaction of pertinent genotypes.
Our Lima, Ohio mutliple sclerosis patients can refer any questions to fMedicine at their Turkey office on the contact web page here or to the Northwestern Ohio MS Chapter can be reached at: Tomahawk Drive at (419) 897-7263. They are located approximately an hour and a half from Lima, Ohio and 45 minutes from Findlay, Ohio. For directions please click here at Google Maps.
Sources: Faculty of 1000 Medicine: evaluations for Ramagopalan SV et al Neurology 2009 Dec 15 73 (24) :2107-11 http://f1000medicine.com/article/id/1387957/evaluation
More interesting links:
MS Susceptibility - MSRA Public Lecture - Dr Sreeram Ramagopalan (video)
*Note from Ms. Friend: As an informal look at others who have MS, readers could leave their birth month in the comment section.
Comments
I will start the comments with my birth month: December. I am, of course, here in the United States though, so that would have something to do with it maybe?
Readers of this article may be interesting in the research
"Circulating 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels in Fully Breastfed
Infants on Oral Vitamin D Supplementation"
If you put the title into a search engine you'll find the full text free online.
From this article you will see that from one month of age it's safe to give babied 100iu/d for each 2.5lbs weight. 400iu/d for a 10lbs baby. Using this formula (1000iu for each 25lbs weight.) works for children and adults also as they found 6400iu/daily was required to keep mothers at the level 58.8ng/ml 148nmol/l at which human breast milk was vitamin d replete.
The research shows that up to 10,000iu/daily is safe and common sense informs us that providing the form you take is biologically identical to a substance human skin makes
in much larger amounts (10.000~20,000iu/daily given full body sun exposure) there will be processes in the system to deal with excess.
Thank you, Ted! I will most certainly look this up to write about here this week. I was already finding a fair amount of vitamin D articles and "stashing" them in a folder for later on this week so this certainly comes in handy. Again, thank you.
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