Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency among children and adolescents

Abstract

Background: Vitamin D is an essential prohormone for the normal skeletal and extraskeletal health. Vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency is an unrecognized epidemic among children and adults worldwide. There are growing data from studies of young children and adolescents in other countries, but a limited information are available regarding the prevalence of this nutritional deficiency/insufficiency among the Nepalese children and adolescents. Thus this study was aimed to find out the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency among children and adolescents, who has attended in Chitwan Medical College (CMC).

Methods: This was a retrospective hospital based study in children between 2 months and 19 years of age, conducted in CMC from April 2015 to December 2016.

Results: Among 108 total studied, overall 74.1% (80) patients had 25(OH) D levels lower than 30 ng/ml with 27.8% having severe deficiency (< 10 ng/ml), 28.7% deficiency (10-19 ng/ml) and 17.6% insufficiency (20-29 ng/ml) category . The prevalence was found higher in females (95.2%), though the difference in prevalence between sexes was not statistically significant (P –value 0.243).

Conclusion: Our study concluded that a high prevalence of low Vitamin D status (deficiency/insufficiency) found among the paediatric population (all paediatric age groups) indicates a need for further national level study to find out the actual prevalence of this nutritional deficiency, as well as the need for vitamin D supplementation to all children and adolescents.