Role of vitamin D in Wnt pathway activation for colonic epithelial cell differentiation

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a medical condition that represents a pathological form of inflammation, causing damage to the colonic mucosa. Adjunctive vitamin D therapy may activate the Wnt/β-catenin pathway that results in cell differentiation and proliferation via stem cell signalling. This study aims to evaluate the effect of vitamin D on β-catenin and cytokeratin 20 (KRT20) as markers of Wnt pathway activation for colonic cell repair.

For the experiment, we used 30 musculus mice strains of BALB/c, which were categorised into five groups; the control group (K-) and four other groups, where colitis was induced by dextran sulphate sodium (DSS) for seven days. On the seventh day, the remaining three groups were administered vitamin D with an initial dose of 0.2 μg/25.0 g, 0.4 μg/25.0 g and 0.6 μg/25.0 g until day 14. An objective index of disease activity and a histological score were required as markers of inflammation to evaluate the results of the clinical trials.

β-catenin and KRT20 showed a significant increase in the proliferation index of vitamin D at a dose of 0.6 μg/25.0 g (91.50 ± 4.09 and 48.75 ± 2.28, respectively; p < 0.05) compared to the colitis group.

This study demonstrates that vitamin D could be used as an induction agent of Wnt activation for healing colonic mucosa via multipotent stem cells.