Posted on 05/01/2011 6:08:29 PM PDT by decimon
News tips from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, April 30-May 3, Denver, Colo.
Pediatricians from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and elsewhere have discovered a link between low levels of vitamin D and anemia in children.
The findings, presented on May 1 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Denver, Colo., show that vitamin D deficiency may play an important role in anemia.
Anemia, which occurs when the body has too few oxygen-carrying red blood cells, is diagnosed and tracked by measuring hemoglobin levels. Symptoms of mild anemia include fatigue, lightheadedness and low energy. Severe and prolonged anemia can damage vital organs by depriving them of oxygen.
To examine the relationship between hemoglobin and vitamin D, the researchers looked at data from the blood samples of more than 9,400 children, 2 to 18 years of age. The lower the vitamin D levels, the lower the hemoglobin and the higher the risk for anemia, the researchers found. Children with levels below 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) of blood had a 50 percent higher risk for anemia than children with levels 20 ng/ml and above. For each 1 ng/ml increase in vitamin D, anemia risk dropped by 3 percent.
Only 1 percent of white children had anemia, compared with 9 percent of black children. Black children also had, on average, much lower vitamin D levels (18) than white children (27). Researchers have long known that anemia is more common in black children, but the reasons for this remain unclear, although some suspect that biologic and genetic factors may be at play.
The new findings, however, suggest that low vitamin D levels in black children may be an important contributor to anemia.
"The striking difference between black and white children in vitamin D levels and hemoglobin gives us an interesting clue that definitely calls for a further study," said lead investigator Meredith Atkinson, M.D., M.H.S., a pediatric nephrologist at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
While the findings show a clear link between low vitamin D levels and anemia, they do not prove that vitamin D deficiency causes anemia, the investigators caution.
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Other institutions involved in the research were Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of New York.
Multiple forms often contend for the same receptors. Supplements can be weird. “take more vitamin D” can be risky for some people.
The fact about that fact is that it's not a fact. The sun must be high in the sky for our skin to make vitamin D. In most of the United States the sun never gets high enough for much of the year.
D6 is listed at the end of page 6, the last page.
You can find it written as 25(OH)vitamin D. Some docs aren't thrilled with its methodology. My guess is a problem with the reproducibility of results.
Thanks.
The D2 and D3 forms are all I’ve seen as dietary supplements. Don’t know where the other Ds would be found or if they are suitable as supplement.
Not surprised. Here in phx I’m sure we’re getting that sun, they aught to do a study to see whether we have kids with anemia much here.
Anemia could have many causes.
Here's something on vitamin D, season and latitude:
"Sun exposure Most people meet their vitamin D needs through exposure to sunlight [5,31]. Ultraviolet (UV) B radiation with a wavelength of 290-315 nanometers penetrates uncovered skin and converts cutaneous 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3, which in turn becomes vitamin D3 [9,32,33]. Season, geographic latitude, time of day, cloud cover, smog, skin melanin content, and sunscreen are among the factors that affect UV radiation exposure and vitamin D synthesis [33]. The UV energy above 42 degrees north latitude (a line approximately between the northern border of California and Boston) is insufficient for cutaneous vitamin D synthesis from November through February [5]; in far northern latitudes, this reduced intensity lasts for up to 6 months. In the United States, latitudes below 34 degrees north (a line between Los Angeles and Columbia, South Carolina) allow for cutaneous production of vitamin D throughout the year [27]." http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp
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