deficiency

Experts found adults and children taking oral steroids were at two fold higher risk of severe vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D deficiency was found in about 55 percent of Parkinson's patients compared to 41 percent of Alzheimer's patients, and 36 percent of healthy, elderly people.

The findings of the study adds to a growing body of evidence that lack of vitamin D could well be one of the risk factors of Parkinson's disease, according to first author Marian Evatt, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Emory.

Evatt considered comparing Parkinson's patients with Alzheimer's patients to analyze the possibility that it was the neuro-degenerative diseases in general that led to vitamin D insufficiency.

As per a novel study led by Brent Kinder, MD, UC Health pulmonologist, director of the Interstitial Lung Disease Center at the University of Cincinnati, Vitamin D deficiency can lead to a higher risk of developing autoimmune lung diseases.

People with inadequate levels of the vitamin are more prone to autoimmune-related connective tissue diseases, like lupus and type 1 diabetes.