Vitamin D supplementation significantly lowered flu incidence in a double-blind study of Japanese children published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“A little over three years ago, a San Francisco-area psychiatrist and several colleagues in other fields floated a provocative hypothesis: that a deficiency in vitamin D — the sunshine vitamin — might render people vulnerable to infections, including the flu. Now Japanese researchers offer tangible support for that idea. They show that vitamin D supplementation dramatically cut the incidence of seasonal flu among the children they followed,” Science News reported this week.

The Japanese study followed children who were given 1,200 international units of vitamin D daily, compared to a group given a placebo. Incidence of Influenza A was 72 percent higher in the group that didn’t get vitamin D. The study comes on the heels of breakthrough science showing that vitamin D actually activates the body’s T-cells that fight off infections published in the journal Nature Immunology this month. That study unlocked the mechanism by which “The Sunshine Vitamin” is linked to improved immune system response to infectious diseases.

To read the Science News story click here.

To read the study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition click here.