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RESEARCHERS REPORT CASE OF VITAMIN D INTOXIFICATION FROM SUPPLEMENTS
02 July 2001 - Boston University
| For many people, vitamins are beneficial and essential, not potentially poisonous. However, in a "Letter to the Editor" of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, describe the dangers associated with ingestion of an over-the-counter vitamin D supplement. |
For many people, vitamins are beneficial and essential, not potentially poisonous. However, in a "Letter to the Editor" of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, describe the dangers associated with ingestion of an over-the-counter vitamin D supplement. The researchers report on a 42-year-old man who had been hospitalized with symptoms of hypercalcemia-vitamin D intoxification. He had been taking a supplement that contained vitamin D for two years prior to his hospitalization. On admission, his serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was more than 10 fold higher than the upper normal range; 487.3 ng/ml (normal range is 8.9-46.7 ng/ml). Upon stopping use of the supplement, his blood tests slowly returned to normal after thirty months. The researchers went on to examine the patients' supplements, as well as supplements they purchased separately. "The supplements we analyzed contained 26 to 430 times the amount claimed by the manufacturers," said senior author Michael F. Holick, PhD, MD, director of the Bone Health Care Center at Boston University Medical Center. "That's 78 to 1,302 times the recommended safe upper limit of 2000 IU," he said. According to Holick, more than one third of people in the United States regularly use dietary supplements. "Our intention is not to frighten people who take supplements, but to make them aware that these products are not FDA approved and thus are not as stringently regulated as products that are," he added.
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Boston University has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in research in a wide range of disciplines and a demonstrated commitment to fostering innovative interdisciplinary research. The Office of the Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Education supports the University in facilitating research at the both the student and faculty levels.Our mission is to enhance and encourage research at Boston University and to provide a climate conducive to maintaining the University at the cutting edge of research and scholarly activities. We work with the Boston University community to plan and coordinate interdisciplinary research and represent the University in research matters related to Inter-University consortia. To encourage new, innovative, and cross-disciplinary efforts, this office administers the Special Program for Research Initiation Grants (SPRInG). We showcase graduate research at Science & Technology Day. This annual event features nearly 200 research posters by graduate students from both the Medical and Charles River Campuses working in a wide range of disciplines. Our annual research magazine, Research at Boston University, informs a wide audience about a selection of our significant research findings and ongoing studies at Boston University. We also maintain a strong presence on the web through this site and through the Science Coalition’s website, which brings our research successes to the attention of Congress and other policy makers in the federal government. To assist Boston University researchers, this office oversees the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and coordinates with the Office of Sponsored Programs on the Charles River Campus , the research administration on the Medical Campus, the Office of Research Compliance, and the various graduate programs. For the development of commercially viable ideas, we administer the Provost's Innovation Fund and work closely with the Office of Technology Transfer. We also coordinate proposals where there are institutional limits to the number of proposals that may be submitted, cost sharing requirements, significant laboratory renovations, or other special circumstances. This office assists departments and centers to achieve a diverse faculty and graduate student body through our membership and activities with the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate and through our affiliation with the Clare Boothe Luce program of the Henry Luce Foundation. |
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