An international study found that low levels of vitamin in newborns can raise the risk of respiratory infections and wheezing in kids, however, not asthma. The earlier studies have been found an association between vitamin D deficiency and raised risk of cognitive impairment and dementia in later life.
Vitamin D is also known as sunshine vitamin due to its incomparable quality of being produced by the body by just basking in the sun. This is fat soluble vitamin which is naturally present in some foods. Daily thirty minutes of early morning or late afternoon sunlight on face, hands and arms can provide the whole vitamin D one requires.
Now the research team from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has recommended that newborn infants who are lacking in vitamin D appear to be more susceptible to respiratory infections in first month of their life. Such infants also face wheezing during their early childhood. Women who take vitamin D supplements during pregnancy are less likely deliver infants who develop wheezing during childhood.
The acute respiratory infections make children prone to health risks. Like bronchiolitis, a viral infirmity that affects small airway passages in the lungs, is the leading cause of hospitalization in U.S. infants, explained lead researcher Carlos Camargo, MD, DrPH, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.
To verify effect of vitamin D, Camargo and team from New Zealand analyzed statistics from New Zealand Asthma and Allergy Cohort Study followed more than nine hundred kids, for whom umbilical cord blood was available. Mother was asked about their kids’ history of asthma, wheezing, respiratory infection and other infectious diseases from age three months to five years.
The umbilical chord blood of children was measured for levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) that is reflective of vitamin D status. The researchers found that the overall average cord-blood level of 25(OH)-vitamin D was 44 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L), which was considered low. Deficiency of vitamin D was more common among children born in the winter.
Since respiratory infections are the most frequent cause of asthma exacerbations, vitamin D supplements may help to avoid those measures, especially during the fall and winter, when vitamin D levels refuse and exacerbations are more common, stated Camargo. The proposal requires to be tested in large clinical trails, reported the journal Pediatrics.