TABLE 2.

Summary on the role of vitamin D in CP from in vivo and in vitro studies.

Function	Biological effects	References
Inhibition of activation of PSCs	↑Lipid droplet ↑VDR expression	Sherman et al. (2014), Wallbaum et al. (2018)
Anti-inflammatory	↓Pro-inflammatory cytokines	Wallbaum et al. (2018)
Anti-fibrosis	↓ECM	Sherman et al. (2014), Bläuer et al. (2015), Kang et al. (2018), Wallbaum et al. (2018), Kang et al. (2021)
Anti-proliferation	↓PSCs activation ↓PSC number ↑cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors p21/p27 ↑cell cycle arrest at the G (1)/S checkpoint	Sherman et al. (2014), Bläuer et al. (2015), Kang et al. (2018), Wallbaum et al. (2018), Kang et al. (2021)
Induction of differentiation	↑VDR binding ↓SMAD3 binding ↓p-STAT3	Sherman et al. (2014)

VDR, vitamin D receptor; ECM, extracellular matrix; PSCs, pancreatic stellate cells.