Vitamin D and TB

Ran across this today and found it very interesting.  This website talked about more benefits to using Vitamin D to treat and prevent illnesses. 

  "This, of course, is exactly what natural health and integrative medical practitioners have been advocating from the start. Moreover, two studies have now linked vitamin D to the successful prevention and treatment of TB. In the first study, white blood cells converted vitamin D to an active form of the vitamin which helps make a protein that kills the TB bacterium. In the second study, Indonesian scientists compared vitamin D to a placebo, testing them on seventy patients for nine months. The patients who received 10,000 IU of vitamin D (rather than the 400 IU recommended by conventional medicine) led to an astounding 100% cure rate.

  Even more exciting, a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that high doses of vitamin D, administered together with antibiotic treatment, appear to help patients with TB recover more quickly. The vitamin D dampens the body’s inflammatory response to infection, which leads to faster recovery and less damage to lungs."

 
Referenced journal articles are linked within the quote above.  This one below, the second study above) I found particularly fascinating.

Acta Med Indones. 2006 Jan-Mar;38(1):3-5.  The effect of vitamin D as supplementary treatment in patients with moderately advanced pulmonary tuberculous lesion.