Vitamin D metabolic pathway genes and risk of MS

Orton et al. J Neurol Sci. 2011 Jun 15;305(1-2):116-20. Epub 2011 Mar 26.

Previous studies have shown that serum vitamin D levels are genetically influenced. Therefore variations or polymorphisms in vitamin D pathway genes are candidates for association with MS susceptibility.Surprisingly, no there was significant association of vitamin D pathway genes with MS susceptibility after correction for multiple comparisons. The findings fail to directly connect vitamin D metabolism genes to MS susceptibility, despite a large sample size and comprehensive gene coverage.

"Negative papers are as important as positive ones in science. Despite the size of this study (1364 MSers and 1661 unaffected first-degree relatives) the study is still not large enough to look at rare variants as susceptibility genes for MS. So we still need to keep an open mind about the possibility of genes involved in vitamin D metabolism being involved in MS disease susceptibility. Watch this space!"

CoI: Sreeram Ramagopalan a co-author on this paper works in our group. 

Click here to read more about vitamin D and its metabolism