Circulating Vitamin D Concentrations in Two Neighboring Populations With Markedly Different Incidence of Type 1 Diabetes
- Hanna Viskari, MD, PHD12,
- Anita Kondrashova, MD13,
- Pentti Koskela, PHD4,
- Mikael Knip, MD, PHD56 and
- Heikki Hyöty, MD, PHD12
- 1Department of Virology, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
- 2Department of Clinical Microbiology, Center for Laboratory Medicine, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland
- 3Department of Pediatrics, University of Petrozavodsk, Petrozavodsk, Russia
- 4National Health Institute, Oulu, Finland
- 5Department of Pediatrics, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland
- 6Hospital for Children and Adolescents, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Address correspondence to Hanna Viskari, MD, PhD, University of Tampere, Medical School/ FM3, 5th floor, Biokatu 10, 33520 Tampere, Finland. E-mail: hanna.viskari{at}uta.fi
Recent studies have suggested that vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk of type 1 diabetes (1). In Finland, the incidence of type 1 diabetes is the highest in the world, while in the neighboring Karelian Republic of Russia, the incidence is approximately one-sixth that in Finland, despite no difference in HLA-conferred susceptibility (2). Thus, the reason(s) must be linked to environmental factors.
We assessed vitamin D status in the Russian Karelian and Finnish populations to determine whether vitamin D could play a role in the huge difference observed in diabetes incidence. The geographical location in terms of daily sunlight exposure is …
