Colleen Hayes and her team at the University of Wisconsin have made a major breakthrough in a new study of EAE mice and vitamin D.
The findings are truly revolutionary. A single dose of calcitriol followed by moderate doses of Vitamin D3 stopped EAE in 100% of her mice and kept the disease in remission in 100% of her mice.
Her group has been studying this for more than a decade.
They could see that vitamin D alone made little difference in the progression of EAE while calcitriol, the bioactive form of vitamin D, was able to stop the disease in 100% of her mice.
There are problems taking high doses of cacitriol long term because it can cause hypercalcemia.
So Professor Hayes tested her mice by giving them a single large dose of calcitriol that stopped EAE in 100% of her mice.
And then, she gave them a moderate daily doses of vitamin D3, the common form available without a prescription. That was enough to keep her EAE mice in remission for the duration of the study, 100% of them.
Her study uncovered the reason why this combination works.
Mice with EAE and presumably pwMS are not able to convert vitamin D3 to calcitriol in the CNS. Calcitriol is the form needed by the body to manage the immune system.
By giving her mice calcitriol, it was directly available to reboot the immune system and doing so then enabled the mice to convert D3 to calictriol to stop the disease and keep it in remission.
While this approach has not yet been studied in humans, there is every reason to believe it will work, and work far better than any of the currently shipping drugs.
Of course, we, as pwMS and caregivers, are going to have to be the ones to push for testing. There is no $60,000 a year drug in $35 worth of D3 and single dose of calcitriol which might cost around $100.
Here is a link to the study abstract.
Professor Hayes' group directly compared calcitriol + vitamin D3 against methylprednisolone and found that it was far more effect in both stopping EAE and keeping the disease at bay. She also compared it with results of EAE studies of common DMDs and as you can see in the table below, it was significantly more effective.
This is a revolutionary breakthrough if this works as well in humans as it does in EAE mice. Not only would be more effective than any of the currently available drugs, the costs would be orders of magnitude less expensive.