Vitamin D may help prevent type 2 diabetes in people with specific genetic variations, offering a possible path toward personalized diabetes prevention.
More than 40% of U.S. adults have prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are elevated but not yet high enough for a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. New research suggests vitamin D could help slow or prevent that progression in some people, depending on their genetics.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that adults with prediabetes who carried certain variations of the vitamin D receptor gene had a 19% lower risk of developing diabetes when they took a high daily dose of vitamin D.
Researchers say the findings could eventually support more personalized approaches to diabetes prevention for the roughly 115 million Americans living with prediabetes.
The team examined data from the D2d study, a large multi-site clinical trial involving more than 2,000 U.S. adults with prediabetes. Participants received either 4,000 IU of vitamin D daily or a placebo to test whether supplementation could reduce diabetes risk.
Why the Original D2d Trial Raised New Questions
The original D2d trial did not show a significant drop in diabetes risk across all participants.
“But the D2d results raised an important question: Could vitamin D still benefit some people?” said Bess Dawson-Hughes, the study’s lead author and a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.
“Diabetes has so many serious complications that develop slowly over years. If we can delay the time period that an individual will spend living with diabetes, we can stop some of those harmful side effects or lessen their severity.”
