Children at an increased genetic risk for type 1 diabetes could benefit from higher vitamin D intake in their early developmental years, according to research published this month in Diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes, a chronic autoimmune disease that increases in global prevalence by 3 to 5 percent each year, is associated with islet autoimmunity in a child’s pancreas. Islet cells, senior author Jill Norris, MPH, PhD, and colleagues wrote in the study, produce insulin. Islet autoimmunity (IA) is detected by antibodies that accumulate when a body’s immune system attacks islet cells.

Norris, who works with the University of Colorado Anschutz, said in a release from the college that there’s been controversy for years regarding the relationship between vitamin D levels, IA and the development of type 1 diabetes.

Norris and her team drew from the Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study, which encompasses 8,676 children across the U.S., Finland, Germany and Sweden, to test the theory that more vitamin D equalled a decreased risk for diabetes. Clinicians took blood samples from each child every three to six months, starting at infancy, to quantify vitamin D levels and determine the presence of islet autoimmunity.

The researchers found 376 children within the study developed IA, which was defined as the presence of at least one autoantibody (GADA, IAA or IA-2A) on two or more patient visits. The doctors compared those children’s statistics with the figures recorded by 1,041 kids who didn’t show IA and discovered that in patients with a genetic variant in the vitamin D receptor gene, vitamin D levels in early years were lower in children who developed IA and higher in those who didn’t.

According to the study, this is the first trial that’s linked higher levels of vitamin D in childhood with a decreased risk of IA and type 1 diabetes.

“Since this association does not prove cause-and-effect, we look to future prospective studies to confirm whether a vitamin D intervention can help prevent type 1 diabetes,” Norris said in the CU Anschutz release.