Current Drug Targets - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2011

The fat-soluble secosteroid hormone vitamin D is best known for its role in bone metabolism. From a historical perspective, the study of vitamin D deficiency has been intimately related to the study of (possible treatment of) rickets. Although diseases characterized by bone deformations have been described in ancient medical writings from the 1st and 2nd centuries, it was Galen who described the classic bone deformities note Read More

Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, has been important not only for the evolution of a healthy calcified vertebrate skeleton but it also evolved into a hormone that has a wide diversity of biologic effects. During exposure to sunlight the ultraviolet B radiation converts 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3 which in turn rapidly isomerizes to vitamin D3. Once formed, vitamin D3 is metabolized in the liver to 25-hydroxyvitamin Read More

Measurement of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) is widely used for assessing vitamin D status. There has been a dramatic increase in 25-OHD requests over recent years prompting many laboratories to consider the use of automated immunoassays. To achieve higher throughput, these methods have abandoned the traditional solvent extraction of samples and are therefore more prone to non-specific interference. The Read More

Vitamin D has recently been suggested as an important mediator of blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, including heart failure. In patients with heart failure, low vitamin D levels are associated with adverse outcome and correlate with established clinical correlates and biomarkers. Many precursor states of heart failure, such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and diabetes are more prevalent in subjects with low vitamin D l Read More

Prevention of progressive renal function loss and its complications remains the main challenge in clinical nephrology. Although current therapeutic strategies aiming at reduction of blood pressure and proteinuria often slow down deterioration of renal function, still many patients progress to end-stage renal disease. The development of novel pharmacological approaches for treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is theref Read More

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, peripheral arterial disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, and related mortality, even after adjustment for traditional cardiovascular risk factors. Accumulating evidence from experimental, clinical, and epidemiological studies suggests that vitamin D may also be associated with several indices of vascular functi Read More

Diabetes is an increasing epidemic; hyperglycemia results from lack of insulin or inadequate insulin secretion following increases in insulin resistance. Huge costs are placed upon sufferers and health providers, aggravated as serious and disabling complications develop. Thus, measures to reduce the diabetic burden are public health concerns. Vitamin D, identified ∼100 years ago, promotes calcium absorption and utiliza Read More

Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent due to lifestyle and environmental factors which limit sunlight induced vitamin D production in the skin. This “pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency is of concern because low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) have been associated with cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, infectious, autoimmune and malignant diseases. Epidemiological studies have largely but not consistently shown that vi Read More

In the Western world, the majority of morbidity and mortality are caused by multifactorial diseases. Some risk factors are related to more than one type of disease. These so-called universal risk factors are highly relevant to the population, as reduction of universal risk factors may reduce the prevalence of several types of multifactorial disease simultaneously. Vitamin D deficiency is traditionally seen as an etiological factor in Read More

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a common complication of diabetes mellitus and is the primary cause of endstage renal disease in the Western World. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is implicated in the pathogenesis of DN of type 1 diabetes mellitus. VEGF is the main angiogenic factor and a potent mitogen for endothelial cells. It is mainly produced in kidney by podocytes and exerts its biological activities by binding to it Read More

Aortic stenosis is the most common valvular heart disease among adult subjects in western countries. The current treatment for aortic stenosis is aortic valve replacement. The possibility of a medical treatment that can slow the progression of aortic stenosis is very fascinating and statins have been tested to reduce the progression of degenerative aortic stenosis (DAS). The rationale for statin treatment in DAS has a deep patho Read More

Drugs derived from natural resources represent a significant segment of the pharmaceutical market as compared to randomly synthesized compounds. It is a goal of drug development programs to design selective ligands that act on single disease targets to obtain highly effective and safe drugs with low side effects. Although this strategy was successful for many new therapies, there is a marked decline in the number Read More