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posted by janrinok on Monday December 26 2016, @11:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-in-time-for-winter-here dept.

Sunlight allows us to make vitamin D, credited with healthier living, but a surprise research finding could reveal another powerful benefit of getting some sun.

Georgetown University Medical Center researchers have found that sunlight, through a mechanism separate than vitamin D production, energizes T cells that play a central role in human immunity.

Their findings, published today in Scientific Reports, suggest how the skin, the body's largest organ, stays alert to the many microbes that can nest there.

"We all know sunlight provides vitamin D, which is suggested to have an impact on immunity, among other things. But what we found is a completely separate role of sunlight on immunity," says the study's senior investigator, Gerard Ahern, PhD, associate professor in the Georgetown's Department of Pharmacology and Physiology. "Some of the roles attributed to vitamin D on immunity may be due to this new mechanism."

They specifically found that low levels of blue light, found in sun rays, makes T cells move faster -- marking the first reported human cell responding to sunlight by speeding its pace.

Bad news for our basement-dwelling brethren.


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  • (Score: 1) by baldrick on Tuesday December 27 2016, @04:21AM

    by baldrick (352) on Tuesday December 27 2016, @04:21AM (#446244)

    Sunlight , beaches , cute women , cheap rum - what is not to like

    --
    ... I obey the Laws of Physics ...
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:55AM (#446314)

    Sunlight , beaches , cute women , cheap rum - what is not to like

    All the other people there?