I suspect there's some seasonality there: people who aren't forced/strongly pressured to cover up entirely may be exposing more of their bodies during the part of the year when the sunlight is less direct.
What I'm wondering about now is the incidence of rickets; the amount of vitamin D that's needed to protect against MS is almost certainly* higher than the amount you need to prevent rickets, but burqas might mean women and girls not getting even that amount.
* Almost because the last I heard, the correlation between vitamin D and MS looks pretty solid, but the causation is not proven. (It's also possible that this is one of those multicausal things where vitamin D deficiency increases the risk, but there's another factor, possibly an infection or genetic susceptibility. And some researchers think MS is two or more different diseases with similar symptoms, but that's not likely to get teased out until/unless they identify the cause of at least one of them.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-06-21 01:51 am (UTC)What I'm wondering about now is the incidence of rickets; the amount of vitamin D that's needed to protect against MS is almost certainly* higher than the amount you need to prevent rickets, but burqas might mean women and girls not getting even that amount.
* Almost because the last I heard, the correlation between vitamin D and MS looks pretty solid, but the causation is not proven. (It's also possible that this is one of those multicausal things where vitamin D deficiency increases the risk, but there's another factor, possibly an infection or genetic susceptibility. And some researchers think MS is two or more different diseases with similar symptoms, but that's not likely to get teased out until/unless they identify the cause of at least one of them.)