Vitamin D is a fat-soluble hormone primarily responsible in maintaining plasma calcium and phosphorus homeostasis in humans. Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency is a global health issue. Very few foods naturally contain vitamin D; a major source is oily fish such as salmon. Several studies have analyzed vitamin D content in various fish, however studies concerning canned fish are lacking. In particular, this study was interested in evaluating the vitamin D content in canned sardines in not only the whole fish but also in the olive oil or water it was canned in. It was hypothesized that the vitamin D content in sardines canned in water would be greater than sardines canned in olive oil due to the fat-soluble nature of vitamin D to be more easily extracted into olive oil than water. Sardines (~100g) canned in olive oil had a slightly greater vitamin D content than the sardines in water (2,555.6±234.2 and 1,993.7±2,411.3 IUs (p<0.05) respectively). An evaluation of the vitamin D3 content in the olive oil and water used to can the sardines revealed 701.4±471.1 and 149.1±42.2 IUs in the total olive oil and water respectively recovered from the cans. It was determined that of the total vitamin D content in the can (sardines in olive oil or water) 20.9%±12.8% of vitamin D3 is found in the olive oil compared to only 14.2%±10.4% (p<0.05) vitamin D3 found in water. These results support the concept that sardines packed in olive oil may have less vitamin D3 than similar sardines packed in water. The analysis of the sardines revealed that they had more than 13 times the amount of vitamin D3 than that is reported in the USDA table of nutritional facts for canned sardines. This could be because the sardines were caught in the summer months when they are more likely to be consuming food containing vitamin D3 as a result of reduced synthesis of vitamin D3 in zooplankton and other lower life forms that the sardines consume. An alternative explanation for this increase in vitamin D3 content is the process of canning the sardines. Vital Choice, the supplier of the sardines, immediately ices the fish upon retrieval from the ocean (to ensure freshness) and then are canned in less than 5 hours after being caught. This process of freshness preservation could explain why the vitamin D content was so high; possibly an accurate representation of the original vitamin D content in the sardines.

Abstrakt BakgrundProstatacancer är ett mycket vanligt tillstånd som påverkar miljoner människor varje år över världen. Faktum är att cancer är en grupp med cirka 200 olika sjukdomar som orsakas av okontrollerad celltillväxt och dessa celler delar sig okontrollerat tills en tumör uppkommer vilken kan sprider sig över hela kroppen. Cancer beror på fel som uppstår i DNA, så kallade mutationer. Prostatacancer är en av de vanligaste orsakerna till cancerdödlighet hos män, det vill säga att chanser att bota sjukdomen är större om diagnosen sker tidigt i förloppet.SyftetSyftet med detta arbete är att undersöka om vitamin D kan påverka utvecklingen av prostatacancer. Metoden och MaterialI denna arbetet gjordes på litteraturstudien genom sökord i PubMed. Efter de artikelsökningen gjordes om mitt arbete är baserat på sex artiklar och att dessa identifierade med hjälp av databasen PubMed och specifika sökord i kombination med inkludering-och exkluderingskriterier.Resultat Studien har visat att låga nivåer av vitamin D kan också kopplats till en ökad risk för prostatacancer. Det har visat att patienter med prostatacancer medelhöga eller höga vitamin D nivåer i blodet kan vara kopplade till bättre resultat än lägre nivåer det vill säga att högre nivåer av vitamin D är associerat med förbättrad överlevnad. Resultatet redovisade av de artiklarna att vitamin D påverkar utvecklingen av prostatacancer genom att bromsa utvecklingen av cancer.slutsatsI denna litteraturstudie har visat att det finns ett samband mellan 25-hydroxivitamin D och 1,25-dihroxivitamin D är skydda mot patienter som lever med prostatacancer. Det har majoriteten visat på att män med förhöjda av 1,25-dihroxivitamin D, vilket ger bättre överlevnad.

Diabetic vasculopathy (DV) is the most important consequence of chronic hyperglycemia in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). This thesis explores the interaction of blood, bone and kidney in the pathogenesis of DV by i) reviewing the current understanding of pathogenesis of macrovascular and microvascular diseases in DM to identify gaps in literature and generate hypotheses relating to various facets of DV ii) undertaking a series of prospective studies to examine these hypotheses iii) analysing the findings and integrating any new information obtained from the clinical studies into the current knowledge base and iv) generating hypotheses upon which future work might be based. The literature search was carried out with the aim of understanding current concepts of pathogenesis of DV and its potential modulators. The original reviews resulting from this process are presented in chapters 2 to 4. A series of pilot studies reported in chapters 7 to 11, were then carried out to interrogate hypotheses originating from this process. The first study was carried out in healthy individuals to define the biological variation of potential modulators of DV, namely erythropoietin (EPO), parathyroid hormone, 25 hydroxyvitamin D and 1, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D to facilitate the design and interpretation of subsequent studies. It revealed a wide biological variation of these modulators in the healthy population thus,emphasizing the need to have a control group in the subsequent study population. To examine whether tubulointerstitial dysfunction occurs before the onset of microalbuminuria, a measurement of the above mentioned parameters was carried out along with markers of tubulointerstitial injury in patients with type 1 and type 2 DM without microalbuminuria and in non-diabetic controls. It was found that tubulointerstitial dysfunction with low levels of EPO and 1, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D and higher excretion of tubular injury markers, occurs before the onset of microalbuminuria. Subsequently, diabetic and nondiabetic chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with EPO deficiency anaemia were examined to study the effects of EPO therapy on the excretion of tubular injury markers. However, in these patient groups, we were unable to demonstrate an effect of EPO therapy on the markers of tubular injury in spite of a beneficial haematological response. To examine whether vascular calcification (VC) and bone mineral density (BMD) were linked in patients with diabetes mellitus and to explore their relationship to modulators of DV, an assessment of VC and BMD was undertaken in patients with type 2 DM with different degrees of proteinuria and normoalbuminuria. VC was assessed by CT scan and BMD by a DEXA scan. Modulators of DV were measured including serum Osteoprotegerin (OPG) and receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-b-ligand (RANKL). The findings were i) a high prevalence of VC and osteopenia in normoalbuminuric type 2 DM patients with normal serum creatinine ii) a weak inverse relationship between VC and osteopenia iii) proteinuric patients had worse VC but not osteopenia iv) weak relationships between OPG levels and both VC and osteopenia, masked by age in multivariate analysis. The final study examined the relationship between modulators of DV, including OPG and RANKL, and the degree of CKD. It was found that abnormalities of OPG and RANKL occur before the onset of microalbuminuria and progress with deterioration of renal function. Compared to nondiabetics, DM patients have higher OPG levels in the predialysis phase and lower levels in haemodialysis phase, a phenomenon that might indicate endothelial exhaustion in dialysis patients with DM. The derangements associated with DV seem to occur earlier than previously thought. Further work is required to untangle these complexities and to define the contribution of factors such as the adverse blood milieu, the vasculature, abnormal bone and mineral metabolism, and early tubulointerstitial damage. The findings from the studies reported here may help in the formulation of new hypotheses, which might contribute to future work in this area.