Childhood vitamin D deficiency is a tuberculosis risk
By: Information Daily Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, May 7, 2014 - 08:46 GMT Jump to Comments
The resurgence of tuberculosis in urban areas of Europe has pushed scientists to confirm a link between the infection and vitamin deficiency.
Vitamin D plays a role in equipping the body to fight tuberculosis, a study presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) has confirmed.
Tuberculosis, a disease spread by a curable infection, attacks the lungs and is often fatal. The disease, whilst unwaveringly prevalent in Africa and Asia, has experienced a European resurgence in recent years, appearing in London and Birmingham in the UK.
Previous studies have confirmed a link between vitamin D and tuberculosis risk in adults, but previously only three small studies have explored the link in children.
The study, conducted by experts in Italy and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, assessed 996 children in hospitals in the UK and Italy.
Prescence of vitamin D deficiency was measured for all children, including 44 with active and 138 with latent tuberculosis. Compared to healthy controls, the children with tuberculosis were considerably more likely to have vitamin D deficiency; 58 per cent for latent and 75 per cent for active tuberculosis, versus 47 per cent in the control group.
Two thirds of the children were from an ethnic minority background – African, Asian or Hispanic. These children are known to be high risk for vitamin D deficiency due to skin pigment and diets commonly low in the vitamin.
Study author Dr Venturini explained: “Italy’s more Mediterranean diet is more rich in vitamin D. However, the fact that almost half the children in Italy had low vitamin D status, despite good sun exposure, should increase the awareness of this problem also in countries known to be at low risk for vitamin D deficiency”.
“This data should alert the physicians about the need of vitamin D supplementation in children with low vitamin D status, since this is also important to prevent rickets—another disease that has recently re-emerged in developed countries. However, no clinical signs of rickets were reported in our study population”.