Nutrients Webinar | Vitamin Deficiency and Benefits of Vitamin Supplementation for Human Health
the chair
Welcome to the Vitamin Deficiency and Benefits of Vitamin Supplementation for Human Health Webinar!
Vitamins are essential nutrients that the body needs to function properly. Intake via the diet is often inadequate compared to recommendations, and this is an issue in developing countries and also in industrialized countries for some vitamins. A person may not be aware or ‘feel’ of their poor vitamin status early-on, nor does it present any other symptoms; rather, it impacts human health later on in life (triage theory). Intake data are developed via questionnaires, presenting risks of under- or over-reporting. As such, it is more accurate to measure the status of vitamins in the body. Status data are more important because they reflect the actual situation in humans. Statistics on a suboptimal nutrient status provides individuals with information to act and address nutritional disruption.
Intake recommendations for vitamins are science-based and are often defined to avoid deficiencies; they differ for different age groups, sexes, and risk groups, for example for pregnant and lactating women, or the elderly. Intake recommendations are defined for healthy people, and in clinical conditions, there is insufficient research on vitamin depletion and deficiency, leading to inadequate treatment recommendations that do not consider the role that vitamins play in reducing the risks of diseases that require higher recommendations. An optimal nutritional status provides many health benefits. The webinar examples present cut-off points developed for deficiency, suboptimal status, and optimal vitamin status. Furthermore, biomarkers can importantly be used in this context to assess vitamin status. Finally, in the webinar examples, the benefits of optimal vitamin status for long-term health are presented.
Date: 3rd April 2025
Time: 02:00 pm CEST | 08:00 pm CST (Asia)
Webinar ID: 840 9110 1129
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Meet the Event Chair
Meet Our Speakers
Prof. Dr. Florian Schweigert
Institute of Nutritional Science, University of Potsdam, Germany;
Prof. Dr. Florian J. Schweigert is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of human and animal nutrition, academic administrator, and entrepreneur. His research focuses on nutritional biomarkers in the context of metabolic syndrome and micronutrient deficiencies, particularly in developing countries. The results of his work have been published in more than 250 scientific publications in international journals. He completed his veterinary studies at the University of Munich and was an academic fellow at Harvard Medical School, Boston, US. After working as a Full Professor at the University of Leipzig, he held the Chair of Physiology and Pathophysiology of Nutrition and was Vice President for International Affairs and Fundraising at the University of Potsdam. At the European level, he has served as Chair of the European Digital UniverCity (EDUC) Alliance, is Vice President of the Turkish–German University Consortium, and is a member of a number of international academic boards. Innovative research ideas and concepts have led to the creation of several spin-off companies. As CEO, he leads BioAnalyt and QuImpact, which are dedicated to developing innovative testing systems for the food and feed industry, personalized diagnostics, and the strategic implementation of nutrition improvement programs.
Prof. Dr. Stephan Bakker
Department of Internal Medicine, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands;
Stephan Bakker (1963) studied medicine at Leiden University, where he graduated in 1988. In 1995, he was registered as an internist, with a sub-specialization in nephrology. From 1995 to 1999, he served as a staff member of Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the Free University Medical Center in Amsterdam. In 1999, he was appointed as a staff member of Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the University Medical Center of Groningen. In 2002, he received his PhD degree, and in 2008 he was appointed as Associate Professor. In 2014, he was appointed as Full Professor of Internal Medicine. Bakker’s research focuses on finding potentially modifiable factors that influence renal outcome, the development of cardiovascular disease, and the quality of life in kidney transplant recipients and patients with diabetes. To do so, he builds cohort studies with underlying biobanks, wherein he investigates the association of nutritional intake and biomarkers for health status, nutritional intake, nutritional status, and environmental exposure with long-term outcomes in kidney transplant recipients, patients with diabetes, and the general population. He has supervised 70 successfully defended PhD theses, is a co-author of more than 1000 Pubmed-indexed papers, and has a Web-of-Science h-index of more than 90.
Sponsors and Partners
Organizer
Assessment of Vitamin Deficiency and Benefits of Vitamin Supplementation for Human Health
Edited by Prof. Dr. Manfred Eggersdorfer
Deadline for submission: 25 April 2025
The webinar was hosted via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found below. In order to learn about future webinars, you can sign up to our newsletter by clicking “Subscribe” at the top of the page.
This webinar emphasized the importance of vitamin intake for proper bodily function, comparing vitamin status between industrialized and developing countries. It also highlighted the significance of clinical situations, especially for patients who have undergone surgical procedures, in influencing vitamin levels.