Vitamin D deficiency worsens kids’ asthma

By Jyoti Pal

616 asthmatic children between ages 6 and 14 were enrolled for the study. Using blood monitoring methods, the levels of Vitamin D were measured in children with asthma.

While 21 children reportedly measured “deficient” in circulating levels of Vitamin D, 152 had blood vitamin D levels considered "insufficient", researchers highlighted.

Comparing blood vitamin D levels in relation to past medical history, children with lower vitamin D levels were significantly more likely to have been hospitalized for asthma in the previous year. Such children also recorded increased airway hyperactivity in lung function tests and reportedly used more anti-inflammatory asthma medications, opposed to those who recorded optimum or near-optimum blood vitamin D levels, researchers tabulated.

Furthermore, these children were considerably more likely to have several markers of allergy, including dust-mite sensitivity, researchers highlighted.

Broadly, “lower levels of vitamin D were associated with more severe asthma,” study’s lead researcher, Dr Juan Celedon of Harvard Medical School, averred.

“This study also provides epidemiological support for a growing body of in vitro evidence that vitamin D insufficiency may worsen asthma severity, and we suspect that giving vitamin D supplements to asthma patients who are deficient may help with their asthma control,” Celedon wrote in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Eggs and oily fish are naturally rich in Vitamin D. In addition, foods like milk, oil spreads, margarine, breakfast cereal, yogurt and bread are now-a-days being fortified with Vitamin D.

Besides diet, a moderate sun exposure can help make up depleted levels, researchers emphasized. But this advice should be heeded with caution as excessive sun exposure increases the risk of developing skin cancerdefine.

Another source of vitamin D – supplements - too should be taken with care. An overdose of vitamin D may lead to hypercalcemia (abnormally high concentrations of calcium in blood) resulting in overcalcification of the bones, soft tissues, and kidneys. It can also cause irreversible kidney damage.