Vitamin D: a potential prevention for type 2 DM?

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a disease prevalent worldwide, with a rapidly growing parallel prevalence and adversities affecting multi-body systems. The global prevalence of T2DM, affecting 10.5% of the world’s population currently, is expected to increase with a greater spike seen in middle-low income countries. Following COVID-19, a significant rise of 77.3% was also observed in youth onset T2DM which poses a greater risk of complications. Hence, it is imperative to treat T2DM effectively. Over the last decade, vitamin D has emerged as a risk factor for T2DM and vitamin D supplementation has been inferred as a potential intervention to lower diabetes risk. In recent trials, Vitamin D levels have been seen to reduce the severity of complications in diabetics and the risk of T2DM in pre-diabetics. Maintenance of Vitamin D levels and supplementation in those deficient, has lowered the risk of microvascular complications, significantly reduced FBG and HbA1c especially in obese, Asians and patients with Vitamin D deficiency, improved the healing of diabetic foot ulcer by improving glycemic control and suppressing pro-inflammatory cytokine expression. Vitamin D supplementation has also shown to significantly decrease the risk of premature birth, neonatal hospitalization, and hyperbilirubinemia in patients with gestational diabetes mellitus by lowering serum low-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, total cholesterol, and an elevation in serum 25(OH)D and high-density lipoprotein levels. Due to lower side effect profile than drugs, large scale trials on preventative benefits of Vitamin D on diabetics and pre-diabetics should be conducted to establish these results. Furthermore, several long-term studies performed also revealed an inverse correlation between vitamin D levels and the occurrence of diabetes mellitus.