The recent study revealed that diabetics who have deficiency of vitamin D have double risk of heart disease as compared to people without diabetes.

Study also showed that regular intake of sunshine vitamin could be helpful for the diabetics. Earlier studies have already shown that diabetics have low vitamin D levels as compared to people without the diabetes.

Research team led by Carlos Bernal-Mizrachi, M.D., a Washington University endocrinologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, compared data collected from 76 obese people, average age 55, having high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and low vitamin D levels with the data collected from 15 similar people with normal vitamin D levels and 45 people with normal blood pressure.

Bernal-Mizrachi said that Macrophages low on vitamin D become indiscriminate devourers, gobbling up too much LDL and transforming into foam cells, core constituents of arterial plaques.  

Research team found that the cells known as macrophages absorbed more cholesterol in absence of sufficient vitamin D. The study showed that macrophages from people with diabetes were more affected by the presence of vitamin D as compared to the macrophages of people without diabetes.  

Research team also found that macrophages of diabetics deficient in vitamin D absorbed more cholesterol as compared to diabetics without sufficient vitamin D levels.