ABOUT ODIN (Grant no. 613977)

Duration: 4 years from November 2013 to October 2017

Coordinator:  ODIN waq coordinated by University College Cork (IE)

Project partners: the project had 31 beneficiaries from 18 countries including 12 EU Member States, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Serbia, Ukraine and the US.

Source of funding: ODIN was a new Collaborative Project, funded through the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme (KBBE.2013.2.2-03).

Background

It is widely recognised that vitamin D has important implications in human health such as growth and development as well as successful ageing. But, fundamental knowledge gaps are barriers to implementing a safe and effective public health strategy to prevent vitamin D deficiency and optimise status.

Aim & Project deliverable(s)

This project provided evidence to prevent vitamin D deficiency in Europe, and improve nutrition and public health through food. By establishing an internationally standardised analytical platform for 25OHD, ODIN measured the distribution of circulating 25OHD and described the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency amongst Europeans.

ODIN also delineated the relative contributions of sun and dietary sources of vitamin D to circulating 25OHD using biobanks and data from National nutrition surveys.

In support of planned EFSA revisions of vitamin D recommendations, ODIN carried out three RCT in pregnant women, children and teenagers and a fourth RCT in ethnic immigrant groups to provide experimental data specifying vitamin D intake requirements. Using dietary modelling, innovative food-based solutions to increase vitamin D in the food supply through a combination of bio-fortification of meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms and yeast will be developed, and ODIN tested the efficacy and safety of these products in food-based RCT varying in scale from small product-specific trials to a large total diet study in vulnerable indigenous and immigrant sub-groups.

ODIN assembled the largest critical mass of prospective adult, pregnancy and birth cohort studies to date, and conducted meta-analyses and individual subject-level meta-regression analyses to integrate standardised data on vitamin D status, a priori defined clinical endpoints, and genotype to examine relationships between vitamin D and human health, including beneficial and adverse effects on perinatal outcomes, bone growth and body composition, and allergic disease in children as well as cardiovascular disease and mortality in adults.

ROLE of EuroFIR AISBL in ODIN

EuroFIR AISBL participated in WP2 on Dietary exposure to vitamin D in European populations, Food intake and in WP10 on Dissemination and stakeholder engagement and a member of the Project Management Group.