Anaphylaxis and vitamin D: a role for the sunshine hormone?

摘要

More than a century ago, the dramatic biologic effects of sunshine and vitamin D supplementation on treating and preventing rickets, a debilitating childhood bone disease, were first established by using geographic information as a proxy for what was later recognized as vitamin D status. In addition to its classic categorization as a regulator of calcium and phosphorus metabolism and bone mineralization, vitamin D also has widespread im-munomodulatory effects. These occur through a variety of different signaling pathways involving the vitamin D receptor, a member of the steroid hormone receptor family that is found in many different types of immune cells(Table I).