Daily intake of vitamin D-fortified doogh (Persian yogurt drink) improved inflammatory markers in type 2 diabetics and extra calcium conferred additional anti-inflammatory benefits, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM).

Inflammation is known to have a central role in the development of type 2 diabetes and its further complications like coronary heart disease and stroke. Vitamin D carries benefits for skeletal health but evidence of an anti-inflammatory effect from clinical studies in humans remains scarce.

"Our previous research showed that improvement of vitamin D status by regular daily intake of a fortified yogurt drink resulted in lowered blood glucose levels in diabetic patients," said Tirang Neyestani, PhD, of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran and lead author of the study. "The current study found that consuming a vitamin D-fortified yogurt drink also decreased serum substances like highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) which are known to have an inflammatory role."

In this study, researchers conducted a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial over 12 weeks in 90 patients with type 2 diabetes. Study participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups to receive two 250mL bottles a day of either plain doogh, vitamin D-fortified doogh or calcium plus vitamin D-fortified doogh. Vitamin D levels, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers such as hsCRP, fibrinogen and adiponectin were measured in blood samples taken from study participants.

"Our study showed for the first time that adiponectin, a substance secreted by fat tissue that has an anti-inflammatory effect, increased when calcium and vitamin D-fortified doogh was consumed," said Neyestani. "Our findings may offer interesting therapeutic options for diabetic patients."

All pregnant women should be tested for vitamin D deficiency and those found to be deficient should be treated, say experts.

Pregnant women with gestational diabetes are likely to have low levels of vitamin D, potentially leading to bone weakness in their babies, according to research in the latest issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.

Researchers studied 147 women who attended Westmead Hospital's gestational diabetes clinic between February 2007 and February 2008, excluding those with known pre-pregnancy glucose intolerance.

More than 40 per cent of the women were found to have inadequate vitamin D levels. Lau and colleagues found that while low levels were more common in women with darker skin, more than 25% of women in all groups were deficient.

"Vitamin D insufficiency has a well established impact on bone density, neonatal vitamin D and calcium status, and childhood rickets (soft or weak bones)".

"The 41 per cent prevalence of inadequate 25(OH)D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) levels in women with GDM (gestational diabetes mellitus) in our study is unacceptable and identifies vitamin D insufficiency as an issue of public health significance," Dr Gunton said.

The researchers recommended that further research into the potential link between vitamin D status and gestational diabetes be conducted.

In an accompanying editorial, Professor Peter Ebeling from the University of Melbourne at Western Health suggested scheduling of lower-cost, higher-dose vitamin D supplements be altered so that more women could afford them.

"Those pregnant and breastfeeding women that are most at risk of vitamin D deficiency are often the least likely to be able to afford supplements," Professor Ebeling said.

Exposure to bright artificial light between dusk and bedtime can reduce the quality of your sleep and may increase the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes, new research has found.

The study included 116 healthy participants, aged 18 to 30, who were exposed to either bright room light or dim light for eight hours before bedtime for five consecutive days. Blood plasma was collected every 30 to 60 minutes, to check the volunteers' levels of melatonin, a hormone produced at night by the pineal gland in the brain.

Melatonin regulates the sleep-wake cycle and has been shown to regulate blood pressure and body temperature.

The study found that exposure to bright room light before bedtime shortened the duration of melatonin production by about 90 minutes, compared to exposure to dim light. In addition, exposure to bright room light during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by more than 50 percent.

The study is scheduled for publication in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

"Given that chronic light suppression of melatonin has been hypothesized to increase relative risk for some types of cancer and that melatonin receptor genes have been linked to type 2 diabetes, our findings could have important health implications for shift workers who are exposed to indoor light at night over the course of many years," study author Joshua Gooley, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a news release from the Endocrine Society.

"Further research is still needed to both substantiate melatonin suppression as a significant risk factor for breast cancer and determine the mechanisms by which melatonin regulates glucose metabolism," Gooley added.

The link between depression and diabetes risk works the other way round too; diabetes can cause depression. Put simply, diabetes can cause depression and depression can cause diabetes, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health wrote in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Over 10% of all US adults have diabetes; for those aged at least 60 years the figure is 23%. About 14.8 million Americans are affected by a major depressive disorder annually. The authors explained, "Although it has been hypothesized that the diabetes-depression relation is bidirectional, few studies have addressed this hypothesis in a prospective setting."

An Pan, Ph.D., and team gathered data on 65,381 adult females aged 50 to 75 to see what the relationship between diabetes and depression might be. The women had to fill in an initial questionnaire with details about health practices and their medical history. Follow-up questionnaires were completed every two years for ten years until the end of 2006.

The investigators classified participants with depression as those diagnosed with the disease by a doctor, and/or taking antidepressants. Those who said they had depression were given another questionnaire to fill in with questions about their depression, including symptoms, treatments and diagnostic tests.

Depression to diabetes risk

During the whole study period 2,844 females developed type 2 diabetes and 7,415 were identified with depression. Those with depression had a 17% higher risk of developing diabetes - even after the researchers ruled out certain risk factors, such as BMI (body mass index) and physical activity. The women on antidepressant medications had a 25% higher risk of developing diabetes compared to those without depression.

Diabetes to depression risk

The investigators also found that those with diabetes had a 29% higher risk of developing depression compared to women without diabetes. This figure prevailed even after taking into account certain risk factors. Those taking insulin for their condition had a 53% higher risk compared to the non-diabetic women.

The authors wrote, "The findings from this well-characterized cohort of more than 55,000 U.S. women with 10 years' follow-up add to the growing evidence that depression and diabetes are closely related to each other, and this reciprocal association also depends on the severity or treatment of each condition. All the associations were independent of sociodemographic, diet and lifestyle factors." The researchers say their finding indicate that depression has an impact on diabetes risk beyond inactivity and body weight.

They also believe that their study showed a relationship between stress and diabetes. The authors noted, "A diagnosis of diabetes may lead to the symptoms of depression for the following reasons: depression may result from the biochemical changes directly caused by diabetes or its treatment, or from the stresses and strains associated with living with diabetes and its often debilitating consequences." They concluded, "Future studies are needed to confirm our findings in different populations and to investigate the potential mechanisms underlying this association. Furthermore, depression and diabetes are highly prevalent in the middle-aged and elderly population, particularly in women. Thus, proper lifestyle interventions including adequate weight management and regular physical activity are recommended to lower the risk of both conditions."

A new study of nearly 70,000 women found a clear association between abuse in childhood and adolescence and the risk of type 2 diabetes in adult women.

"Much, although not all, of this association is explained by the greater weight gain of girls with a history of abuse," said lead study author Janet Rich-Edwards. "The weight gain seems to start in teenage years and continues into adulthood, increasing the risk of diabetes."

She added, "Weight gain explained only 60 percent of the association, however, implying that the experience of abuse gets incorporated into the body through other mechanisms, as well."

Rich-Edwards is director of developmental epidemiology at the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"We need to understand how this happens," she said. "One theory is that abused women develop disordered eating habits as a compensatory stress behavior, leading to excess weight gain. Another theory suggests that child abuse may increase levels of stress hormones that later cause weight gain and insulin resistance, characteristic of diabetes."

The study appears online and in the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Participants included 67,853 registered nurses from the Nurses' Health Study II. On receiving the questionnaire about violence mailed in 2001, "several said, 'It's about time you asked about violence!'" Rich-Edwards said.

A stunning 54 percent of nurses reported physical abuse and 34 percent reported sexual abuse before age 18. Moderate and severe physical and sexual abuses were associated with 26 percent to 69 percent higher risks of diabetes in maturity.

"Child abuse can leave an enduring imprint on health in adulthood," said Rich-Edwards. "We hope to alert clinicians to the possible role of abuse in the histories of some patients that they see with pre-diabetes and diabetes. We also need to help families prevent child abuse and we need to learn the best ways to reduce the long-term health burden that it imposes."

Fred Rogosch, Ph.D., director of research at the Mt. Hope Family Center at the University of Rochester, called the study "powerful" and said it provides the most compelling evidence to date of the influence of child physical and sexual abuse on the development of type 2 diabetes in women.

"The deleterious effects of child abuse extend beyond the time period of occurrence, resulting in a chain reaction of long-term consequences that impair both physical and mental health across the life course." Rogosch said. "Preventing child abuse and ameliorating its effects hold promise for improving public health."