[Osteopathies and vitamin D. New concepts and prospects in the light of recent advances]

Recognition over the last ten years of the fact that vitamin D does not act as such, but must be converted into a hormonal form, has filled in the picture physiological endocrine regulation of calcium and phosphate homeostasis. While vitamin D has thus lost the dietetic significance associated with it for over 50 years. Nevertheless, new interpretations of the aetiopathogenesis of many demineralizing bone diseases are of much greater utility. Nor is it futuristic to suppose that all the biochemical parameters establishing one of the metabolisms that are under strict homeostatic control in the body, such as that of calcium and that of phosphate, are understood.