LONDON, Nov 1: Making sure that babies and young children get enough vitamin D can reduce their risk of developing diabetes, scientists said on Friday.

Type 1 diabetes, which starts at an early age, has been associated with a deficiency of vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin, which is also found in fortified milk and dairy products, cod liver oil and some fatty fish.

When Dr Elina Hypponen, of the Institute of Child Health in London, and her colleagues in Finland compared the health of more than 12,000 children they found that the youngsters who had been given vitamin D supplements were 80 per cent less likely to develop diabetes than children not given the vitamin.

“We found a very strong association for an overall intake of vitamin D, as well as for the dose of vitamin D (and reduced risk),” Hypponen said in a telephone interview.

“Our results suggest that development of type 1 diabetes is associated with low intake of vitamin D,” Hypponen explained in a report in the Lancet medical journal.

She said the findings were not surprising because vitamin D acts as an immunosuppressive agent and diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease, caused by antibodies produced against substances naturally present in the body.—Reuters