Melbourne, November 17: A team of Australian scientists claim to have discovered that frequent exposure to sun and the resulting production of Vitamin D in the body could result in lowering the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS).
According to a study conducted by the researchers at Menzies Institute, people living in Tasmania are seven times more likely to develop the disease than Queenslanders as, they claim, there is a link between sunlight exposure and multiple sclerosis. They presented their paper at a national scientific conference for medical research in Hobart.
The auto immune disease affects the central nervous system and occurs more often in regions furthest from the equator. Tasmania has the highest rate of MS in the Australian country.
Bruce Taylor, a principle research fellow at Menzies Institute in Hobart, said that symptoms vary depending on the time of year.
“Multiple sclerosis attacks happen seasonally. They are more common in spring than they are in autumn and spring is when you have your lowest vitamin D levels,” he said.
He studied 145 patients in southern Tasmania and tracked their seasonal susceptibility to the disease.
“We looked at people who had MS and we looked at how their own vitamin D levels influenced their risk of having an attack of MS, which is referred to as a relapse,” he was quoted in an ABC report.
–Agencies