Nutrients Webinar | What is New on Vitamin D: Implications for Daily Clinical Practice
Welcome from the Chairs
5th Nutrients Webinar
What is New on Vitamin D: Implications for Daily Clinical Practice
In the last two decades, vitamin D has been the focus of tremendous ongoing scientific research. Its primogenetic undisputed role in bone mineralization has been expanded to a strikingly disparate amalgamation of transparent scientific cases and observational studies, randomized controlled trials of doubtful design, and sporadically personal aphorisms and dogma. This phenomenon configures a burgeoning scientific field in which substantial controversy is inevitably reflected in daily clinical practice, resulting in a precarious interpretation of available results, lifestyle-affected vitamin D supplementation in vitamin-D-sufficient populations, and ineffective dosing and time regimens.
In this context, somewhere in between the dipole of inordinate enthusiasm and critical opposition, the vast majority of healthcare providers worldwide, involved in some part of the developed vitamin D daily agenda, postulate a sound individualized scientific approach unbiased from quandaries, oriented to improve long-term health outcomes and patient quality of life beyond the platonic caves of available knowledge in the field.
This webinar on vitamin D aims to draw attention to all current conflicting aspects of vitamin D research, including the following:
- What is new on Vitamin D and COVID-19?
- Results from the VITAL study: The changing spectrum of extraskeletal benefits of vitamin D in autoimmune diseases.
- Calcifediol for the treatment of hypovitaminosis D: Clinical perspectives.
- New data on dosing regimens (VIDA trial): Should monthly dosing be excluded from chronic vitamin D supplementation?
These hot topics are discussed by top-class international experts in the field, having devoted several years to vitamin D research. We hope for this webinar to shed some light on the ongoing controversy of the vitamin D “friendly” perspective versus vitamin D skepticism, with a discourse on clinical implications and physicians’ daily decision making, into the beginning of the new decade.
Date: 10 June 2022
Time: 3:00 pm CEST | 9:00 am EDT | 9:00 pm CST Asia
Webinar ID: 892 9491 0373
Webinar Secretariat: nutrients.webinar@mdpi.com
Chair
Spyridon Karras was born in Thessaloniki and graduated from the Medical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He acquired his specialization in Endocrinology in 2010. His PhD thesis (completed in 2015) focused on the pleiotropic effects of vitamin D during pregnancy. This research endeavor led to the development of several worldwide collaborations in the field of vitamin D research and was the initial basis for the foundation of the Mediterranean vitamin D experts meeting. He has published more than 120 full papers in peer-reviewed international journals, with the vast majority relating to extraskeletal vitamin D behaviors. According to Expertscape and other ranking sites, he ranks in the top 20 positions in the field worldwide. He is a regular reviewer of more than 100 international journals and has been a lecturer in national and international meetings in the field, receiving several awards for his research activities. His current position is as a postdoctoral researcher in the National Scholarship Foundation of Greece.
Invited Speakers
Department of Health Sciences, College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Fatme Al Anouti is a vitamin D research expert, whose research has triggered awareness and significant action to reduce the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among the UAE population in the Middle East through publishing clinical guidelines for vitamin D in the country, apart from public seminars and screening campaigns. Having been awarded the prestigious medical distinction award for her contributions, Fatme continues to research the biochemical and genetic aspects of vitamin D deficiency in conjunction with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and osteoporosis. Her latest research focused on the link between the genetic variants in the vitamin D metabolism pathway and the severity of COVID-19 among the UAE population.
My laboratory has long studied the mechanisms and physiological consequences of the regulation of gene transcription through the use of nuclear receptors, in particular the vitamin D receptor (VDR). Since the early 2000s, the lab’s work has increasingly focused on the nonclassical physiological actions of vitamin D, most notably its role in immune system regulation. We discovered binding sites for the VDR in the regulatory regions of human genes encoding antimicrobial peptides, DEFB4/HBD2 and CAMP, two of the body’s natural antibiotics. This finding opened up the field of study of 1,25D as an inducer of innate immunity in humans. Subsequently, we found that 1,25D stimulates the expression of components of an innate immune pathway, initiated by the pattern recognition receptor NOD2/CARD15 and terminating with the gene encoding antimicrobial peptide DEFB4, which is defective in Crohn’s Disease. Our work has also had implications in understanding the host macrophage responses to infection by M. tuberculosis, the etiological agent of TB, and how vitamin D combats M.tb. infection.
Department of Physiology, Necker-Enfants Maladies University Hospital, Paris Descartes University, Paris, France
A now-retired ex-chief of the hormonology laboratory, Jean Claude Souberbielle has been involved in vitamin D research for 30 years, and whilst not exclusively, he has had special interest in regards to its application to disorders of the calcium–phosphate–PTH axis, as well as to bone and kidney diseases. Additionally, he has published papers concerning the relationship between vitamin D and various conditions such as pregnancy, multiple sclerosis, prostate cancer, renal transplantation, HIV infection, etc. He was previously the head of an expert group that published the most recent recommendations for vitamin D supplementation in osteoporosis in France.
Department of Clinical, Internal, Anesthesiology, and Cardiovascular Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Full-time professor at the Internal Medicine Department of Clinical, Internal, Anesthesiological and Cardiological Sciences, “Sapienza” University of Rome. Education: Medical degree and specialization in internal medicine at the “Sapienza” University of Rome; visiting doctor at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. Special area of interest and expertise: clinical investigation of metabolic bone diseases, most notably osteoporosis and primary hyperparathyroidism; disorders of phosphate metabolism, with particular interest in tumor-induced osteomalacia.
Webinar Content
Program
|
Speaker/Presentation |
Time in CEST |
|
Dr. Spyridon Karras Chair Introduction |
3:00 - 3:20 pm |
|
Dr. Fatme Al Anouti What is New on Vitamin D and COVID-19? |
3:20 - 3:35 pm |
|
Dr. John White Results from VITAL Study: The Changing Spectrum of Extraskeletal Benefits of Vitamin D in Autoimmune Diseases |
3:35 - 3:50 pm |
|
Dr. Jean Claude Souberbielle Calcifediol for the Treatment of Hypovitaminosis D: Clinical Perspectives |
3:50 - 4:05 pm |
|
Dr. Salvatore Minisola New Data on Dosing Regimens (VIDA Trial): Should Monthly Dosing be Excluded from Chronic Vitamin D Supplementation? |
4:05 - 4:20 pm |
|
Q&A Session |
4:20 - 4:35 pm |
|
Closing of Webinar |
4:35 - 4:45 pm |
Relevant SI
A topical collection in Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This collection belongs to the section "Micronutrients and Human Health".
Collection Editor: Dr. Spyridon N. Karras
Sponsors and Partners
Organizers
