Perspectives

Vitamin D

Mother-child vitamin D deficiency: an international perspective

Adekunle Dawodu¹, Carol L Wagner²

¹ Center for Global Child Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
² Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Correspondence to:
Dr Adekunle Dawodu, Center for Global Child Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC 5041, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3039, USA; adekunle.dawodu@cchmc.org

Accepted 31 May 2007

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Perspective on the paper by Dijkstra et al (see page 750)

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The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Rickets is often considered a 19th century disease. However, despite the availability of vitamin D and demonstration of its efficacy in preventing rickets, vitamin D deficiency rickets still exists as a public health problem with significant morbidity in the Middle East^1–5 and in many Asian countries,^{6 7} and has been reported with increasing prevalence in minority groups in North America^8–10 and in immigrant populations in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.¹¹ In many countries, there are reports of a high prevalence of subclinical vitamin D deficiency in children and adolescents^{12 13} and rickets may merely represent the tip of the iceberg.

With more studies, there are reports from many countries of a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in women of child-bearing age^14–20 and during pregnancy^21–24 and in nursing mothers,^25–27 with likely adverse consequences for women, the fetus and growing infants and children.²¹ What seemed to be a rare entity has . . . [Full text of this article]

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