The Scottish government is investigating the potential health benefits of vitamin D, after reports in The Times that low levels of the vitamin may hold the key to Scotland's appalling health record.

A conference taking place today has been organised by Harry Burns, the Government's Chief Medical Officer, and will examine compelling new evidence that links low levels of vitamin D with lack of sunshine.

Research by the writer and scientist Oliver Gillie has suggested that deficiency in the “sunshine vitamin” is twice as common in Scots as in the English, and is linked to the higher incidence north of the Border of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Dr Gillie called for a public health campaign to get Scots to take vitamin D supplements, in line with northern- hemisphere countries such as Canada, where the Canadian Cancer Society recommends a daily dose of 1,000 IU (international units) in winter.

The guest speaker at the meeting in Edinburgh today is Philippe Autier, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyons. He has carried out analysis that found the intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seemed to be associated with decreases in mortality rates.

Dr Autier concluded that people taking vitamin D lived several years longer, and he gave reassurance that at ordinary doses, long-term vitamin D supplementation does not seem to be associated with any ill health.

He has said that the links between vitamin D levels, supplements and mortality rates needed further investigation, and has recommended that population-based, placebo-controlled, randomised tests lasting for at least six years should be organised.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers from the academic community as well as a range of research funders to exchange ideas and research expertise and consider areas of mutual interest that would benefit from a co-ordinated approach.”

The focus at this stage is understood to be on the preliminary studies and data that may be required before any large trial of vitamin D supplementation could take place. Some British researchers are known to be less convinced of the role that vitamin D deficiency plays in major illness.

Among the speakers is Rona Mackie, from the University of Glasgow, whose work on the risks of sunlight as a cause of skin cancer in fair-skinned Scots is widely accepted.

Johan Moan, of Oslo University, another speaker, has concluded that people who receive a cancer diagnosis in summer live longer than those found in winter to have the disease. He is on record as saying that direct benefits of sun exposure are ten times greater than the risk.

He wrote in a paper last year on the health benefits of the vitamin: “There may be more beneficial than adverse effects of moderately increased sun exposure, even for total cancer mortality. This message should be addressed to populations at risk of vitamin D deficiency.”

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