Vitamin D and Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a major global health problem: the World Health Organisation estimates that there were 9.4 million incident cases and 1.8 million deaths from the disease in 2008. The development of new agents to prevent acquisition or reactivation of latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and to allow shortening of antimicrobial therapy regimens for active tuberculosis without loss of efficacy is a research priority. In this article we describe the immunomodulatory actions of vitamin D metabolites in mycobacterial infection and review the growing body of evidence from observational and intervention studies suggesting that vitamin D might have a role in the prevention and treatment of TB.