So I was looking around at studies done on treatments for arthritis and ran across this article on Vitamin D. The article is called "Vitamin D intake is inversely associated with rheumatoid arthritis: results from the Iowa Women's Health Study". The point of their study was to evaluate the association between vitamin D intake and incidences of rheumatoid arthritis. They picked women between 55 and 69 who previously had no history of rheumatoid arthritis. Their diet and vitamin D intake were evaluated using a questionnaire. The women were then followed up for 11 years to check possible cases of the disease. Their results showed that a greater intake of Vitamin D lead to a decreased risk of RA.
An issue with this study is that it was only done on women. We really have no data then on how Vitamin D intake affects men. It might also be interesting to see what affect Vitamin D has on people who already have rheumatoid arthritis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14730601
Interesting study. Do you think males should have to take in more Vitamin D than females then? Considering that males bone densities and size are generally larger, which would make their joints generally larger. Maybe vitamin D intake is needed in excess for males. I would like to see a study on both of the male and female population with RA, and see how the vit D affects both of them.
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