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People fighting off winter colds and bouts of the flu typically reach for a glass vitamin C-packed orange juice, but new research suggests that vitamin D may be a better protector. People with low levels of the vitamin, which is often called the sunshine vitamin because sun exposure triggers its production in the body, are more likely to catch colds, the flu, and even pneumonia, a broad new study reports. The effect was magnified in people with asthma or other lung diseases.

Vitamin D deficiency is quite common in the United States — particularly in winter…. “People think that if they have a good, balanced diet that they will get enough vitamin D, and that’s actually not true,” said Dr. Michal Melamed…. “Unless you eat a lot of fish and drink a lot of milk, you can’t get enough vitamin D from diet” [CNN].

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A microbe that has caused trouble in human stomachs for around 60,000 years may also play a role in preventing children from developing asthma and other allergies. In a new study, researchers say that a current campaign to wipe out the bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, may be having the unintended consequence of boosting asthma rates in kids.

A longtime resident of the human stomach, H. pylori went largely undetected until Australian scientists discovered it in 1979 and went on to show that it can cause stomach ulcers. Further work has linked it to stomach cancer. It’s now treated with antibiotics whenever detected [Science News]. But researchers say that when they studied health records of over 7,000 kids between the ages of 3 and 13, they found that children with H. pylori in their stomachs were less than half as likely to develop asthma. Those children were also less likely to suffer from eczema and hay fever.

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