School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-13-2025
Abstract
Vitamin D (VD) is a key mineral providing critical modulation of reduction-oxidation homeostasis within biological systems. VD and the VD receptor coordinate essential cellular activities, including mitochondrial electron transport, respiration, antioxidation, gene regulation, and calcium transportation. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), a natural by-product of cellular metabolism, play a prominent role in the mechanisms of biological antioxidant systems and form the basis of antioxidant therapies. However, ROS may also perpetuate pathological processes when produced in excess secondary to inflammatory pathways. Aging processes within cells rely on this reduction-oxidation homeostasis. Thus, the interaction with VD, its receptor, mitochondria, and oxidative stress forms the basis of nearly every known degenerative pathology, citing examples summarized throughout this review. Recent literature has highlighted the increasingly prominent role of VD deficiency as a unifying factor within the ubiquitous degenerative changes that ultimately progress these conditions discussed, such as metabolic syndrome, brain disease, cardiovascular disease, GI disease, immune dysfunction, musculoskeletal disease, and other age-related disorders. Lastly, the paradox of bacterial survival under lethal oxidative stress conditions is presented to explore the proposed mechanisms of such activity and the consideration of antioxidant therapies in the future.
Recommended Citation
Dentino, P., Mora, J., & Zuo, L. (2025). Vitamin D Deficiency and Its Role in Pathologies of Oxidative Stress: A Literature Review. Cureus, 17(8), e90042. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.90042
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Cureus
DOI
10.7759/cureus.90042
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Internal Medicine
Comments
Copyright © 2025, Dentino et al.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.