Red State Relief

SUMMER IS HERE, and with it comes a chance you’ll get too much sun. While there’s no cure for sunburn, a small but intriguing new study suggests taking high doses of vitamin D after exposure may prevent the associated redness and swelling.

In the paper, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, researchers exposed 20 volunteers to a light resembling solar radiation to induce a sunburn on a small patch of skin. They then gave the “burn victims” large doses of vitamin D and followed up with participants one, two and three days (and a week) later to measure skin redness and thickness. The researchers found that vitamin D decreased inflammation, redness and swelling, compared with taking a placebo, and this effect increased in proportion to how much was consumed. D also appears to increase the activity of a gene called arginase-1, which is involved in tissue repair and healing. Taking 50,000 international units of vitamin D—125 times the recommended daily allowance—led to a significant reduction in redness and swelling, compared with the placebo. Those who took 100,000 IU had even less swelling, and those who took 200,000 IU had the greatest reduction in inflammation.

This is the first study to show vitamin D can reduce inflammation and suggests that it “could potentially help prevent sunburn,” says senior author Kurt Lu, a physician scientist and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.

So, if you get burned, should you gulp down a lot of D? The study authors don’t recommend it. “I think that’s probably not a good idea and not well established by this study,” says Barbara Gilchrest, a physician scientist with the dermatology department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Such large doses, if taken repeatedly, have the potential to cause vitamin D toxicity, known as hypervitaminosis D.

It used to be thought vitamin D was primarily involved in building healthy bones and muscles, but recent research has found it has many more roles, including helping to regulate the immune system and influencing inflammation, such as the kind associated with sunburns.