(dailyRx News) Sitting in the sun can help you get healthy doses of vitamin D. But it seems some people with a certain form of arthritis are not getting enough of the sun's rays.
Low levels of vitamin D seem to be common among patients with psoriatic arthritis - a type of arthritis that often happens with skin redness and irritation.
Zahi Touma, M.D., of the Centre for Prognosis Studies in the Rheumatic Diseases in Toronto, and colleagues set out to see how common vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency was among people with psoriatic arthritis. They wanted to find out if vitamin D levels among these patients changed with the seasons, or if geography played a role.
The researchers found that more than half of the 302 participants in the study did not have enough vitamin D.
These vitamin D levels did not seem to be affected by the time of year or whether the person lived in a northern or southern area.
Dr. Touma and colleagues did not find any link between disease activity (the severity of the psoriatic arthritis) and vitamin D levels, which were determined by measuring 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the blood.
The study is published in Arthritis Care & Research.
