Vitamin D boosts recovery from burn injury

Photo: File ISLAMABAD: Burn wounds heal faster in people with high levels of vitamin D, reveals a study. The findings suggest that vitamin D supplements could be a simple and cost-effective treatment to cure burns, reported Medical Xpress, a web-based medical and health news service. Many patients are still at risk of poor recovery despite improvements in burn care over the last 10 years. The complications that burns lead to can range from delayed wound healing through to infections. Patients with severe burns are at high risk of infection that may lead to life-threatening sepsis. In order to investigate the role of vitamin D in recovery from burn injuries, Professor Janet Lord and Dr Khaled Al-Tarrah, at Institute of Inflammation & Aging in Birmingham, assessed the recovery progress, over one year, in patients with severe burns and correlated this with their vitamin D levels. The study found that patients with higher levels of vitamin D had a better prognosis, with improved wound healing, fewer complications and less scarring. The data also showed that burns patients tend to have lower levels of vitamin D. These data suggest that vitamin D supplementation immediately following burn injury may have potent health benefits to the patient, including enhanced antimicrobial activity to prevent infection, and improved wound healing. ?Low vitamin D levels were associated with worse outcomes in burn patients including life-threatening infections, mortality and delayed wound healing,? Lord states. It was also associated with worse scarring but vitamin D levels are something generally overlooked by clinicians.