A recent study has revealed that a treatment with Vitamin D3, which is produced naturally when skin is exposed to the sun or through over-the-counter pills, might help restore damage to your cardiovascular system.
The human cardiovascular system can be damaged by several diseases, including high blood pressure, build-up of fats, cholesterol in and on the artery walls, and diabetes. This eventually increases the risk of heart attack.
The study, which was published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine, showed that taking Vitamin D3, which are specially associated with the bones, at higher doses than those currently used for the treatment of bone diseases may be highly beneficial for the treatment of the dysfunctional cardiovascular system.
"Generally, Vitamin D3 is associated with the bones. However, in recent years, in clinical settings, people recognise that many patients who have a heart attack will have a deficiency of D3. It doesn't mean that the deficiency caused the heart attack, but it increased the risk of heart attack," Tadeusz Malinski, a graduate student at Ohio University said.
The researchers used nanosensors that are about 1,000 times smaller in diameter than a human hair to conduct the study. This helped them to track the impact of Vitamin D3 on single endothelial cells, a vital regulatory component of the cardiovascular system.
According to the team,the dysfunction of endothelium is a common denominator of several cardiovascular diseases, particularly those associated with ischemic events.
"There are not many, if any, known systems which can be used to restore cardiovascular endothelial cells which are already damaged, and Vitamin D3 can do it," Malinski said. "This is a very inexpensive solution to repair the cardiovascular system. We don't have to develop a new drug. We already have it."
Vitamin D3 may also be of great clinical importance in the restoration of dysfunctional cardiac endothelium after heart attack, capillary endothelium after brain ischemia (stroke), hypovolemia, vasculopathy, diabetes and atherosclerosis.
(With inputs from IANS)
