UC San Diego Health:

Our gut microbiomes — the many bacteria, viruses and other microbes living in our digestive tracts — play important roles in our health and risk for disease in ways that are only beginning to be recognized.

University of California San Diego researchers and collaborators recently demonstrated in older men that the makeup of a person’s gut microbiome is linked to their levels of active vitamin D, a hormone important for bone health and immunity.

The study, published November 26, 2020 in Nature Communications, also revealed a new understanding of vitamin D and how it’s typically measured.

Vitamin D can take several different forms, but standard blood tests detect only one, an inactive precursor that can be stored by the body. To use vitamin D, the body must metabolize the precursor into an active form.

“We were surprised to find that microbiome diversity — the variety of bacteria types in a person’s gut — was closely associated with active vitamin D, but not the precursor form,” said senior author Deborah Kado, MD, director of the Osteoporosis Clinic at UC San Diego Health. “Greater gut microbiome diversity is thought to be associated with better health in general.” [Continue reading…]