Vitamin D and Metabolic Diseases: Growing Roles of Vitamin D

Abstract

Vitamin D, a free sunshine vitamin available for mankind from nature, is capable to avert many health-related critical circumstances. Vitamin D is no more regarded as a nutrient involved in bone metabolism alone. The presence of vitamin D receptor in a number of tissues implies that vitamin D has various physiological roles apart from calcium and phosphorus metabolism. Low serum vitamin D has been found to be associated with various types of metabolic illness such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, cardiovascular diseases including hypertension. Various studies reported that vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency in linked with metabolic syndrome risk. This review focuses on various metabolic diseases and its relationship with serum vitamin D status.

Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; Diabetes mellitus; Metabolic syndrome; Obesity; Vitamin D.

Figure 1

The cross-talk between retinoid X receptor (RXR), vitamin D receptor (VDR), and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR). VDR and PPAR share a common binding partner RXR and a common binding site in the DNA, steroid and nuclear hormone receptor binding site. Hence the dominance of expression will be dependent on the availability ratio of VDR and PPAR; both have to compete with one another to get engaged with RXR so that they could get inside the nucleus and could bind at their site of interest. If PPAR concentration is higher than the gene expression of its governance will be dominating the cell, if VDR is higher than the genome will be more accessible for it rather than for PPARs. LVH, left ventricular hypertrophy; CVD, cardiovascular disease.