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UVB-emitting cloth to prevent low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D caused by clothing

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 77, pages 405–406 (2023)Cite this article

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In this issue of EJCN, the paper by Lee et al. [1] brings to mind the classic papers by T.C.B. Stamp in the 1970’s, who also experimented with UVB-emitting lights on people. There, the full-body surfaces of seven subjects were exposed to progressively longer durations of ultraviolet B light (UVB, about 290 nanometers wavelength), starting with one minute on their front and one minute on their back. Each day for up to 20 days the exposure was increased by one minute per side until “skin irritation” (redness?) occurred. All but one subject developed erythemia, since “Alone among these subjects, the black volunteer showed no subjective trace of skin tenderness.” [2] Stamp et al. went on to compare the increases in serum 25(OH)D from full-body-surface UVB treatment against various daily doses of vitamin D (Fig. 1). That work led to the well accepted conclusion that full-body-surface exposure to UVB light can increase circulating 25(OH)D by an amount “shown to be equivalent to oral vitamin D in doses of 8000–10,000 I.U. daily” [3]. Since then, there has been no evidence of vitamin D toxicity due to its production in the skin; likewise, the daily intake of 10,000 IU (shown as 250 mcg/d in Fig. 1) has become the no observed adverse effect level [4, 5].

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Fig. 1: Mean plasma 25(OH)D in 60 subjects during short-term treatment with vitamin D2 or D3 or with 25-hydroxyvitamin D as indicated by the daily intakes shown at the right of the figure.

References

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  1. Department of Nutritional Sciences, and Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Reinhold Vieth

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RV contributed all the work for this article.

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Correspondence to Reinhold Vieth.

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RV is an unpaid scientific advisor to The Vitamin D Society, Canada and to Grassroots Health Nutrient Research Institute, USA.

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Vieth, R. UVB-emitting cloth to prevent low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D caused by clothing. Eur J Clin Nutr 77, 405–406 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-022-01253-9

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