There is more to life than serum vitamin D: a lesson from the past

This commentary revisits a paper from Clinical Science in 1972 entitled “The distribution and storage of vitamin D and its metabolites in human tissues” by Barbara Mawer, Bill Stanbury and colleagues. The paper continues to be well cited 50 years later, in part because the study it describes – which includes the use of human autopsy tissue – would be difficult to replicate today. However, the paper also has resonance today because the focus of the study – what is the fate of vitamin D in the body? – is still not clear. This commentary discusses why the Mawer et al. study was a major advance when published and why there is still much to be learned from this paper half a century later.