You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Archimedes
Question 1: Does vitamin D supplementation prevent acute lower respiratory tract infections in children?
  1. Salma Rashid Ali1,
  2. Helen McDevitt2
  1. 1Section of Child Health, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, UK
  2. 2Neonatal Unit, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Helen McDevitt, Neonatal Unit, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, 1345 Govan Road, Glasgow G51 4TF, UK; Helen.McDevitt{at}ggc.scot.nhs.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2015-308441

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Scenario

    A 5-year-old boy presents with a 4-day history of cough, fever and increased work of breathing. On auscultation, he has right-sided basal crepitations. A chest X-ray shows a right lower lobe pneumonia. He has a medical history of vitamin D deficiency; however, his mother informs you that his vitamin D levels are now normal. This is his second episode of pneumonia since birth. You wonder if there is any evidence to suggest that vitamin D supplementation will reduce his risk of further episodes of lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI).

    Structured clinical question

    In a child with pneumonia (patient), does vitamin D supplementation (intervention) lead to a reduced risk of LRTIs (outcome)?

    Search strategy

    Primary search

    EMBASE and Medline were searched using the Ovid Medline(R) database (1946 to present) in May 2014 with Daily Update Search strategy. The following key words were used: (Vitamin D OR Ergocalciferol OR Cholecalciferol OR alfacalcidol) AND (Respiratory tract infections OR lower respiratory tract OR Pneumonia). The search language was limited to English and ‘all child’ (0–18 years). This identified 35 articles. Only trials investigating the effects of vitamin D supplementation on the incidence of acute LRTI were included, leaving three relevant articles. The references of all relevant publications were reviewed and two further articles were identified. A total of five articles were available for review1–5 (table 1).

    View this table:
    • In this window
    • In a new window
    Table 1

    Does vitamin D supplementation prevent acute lower respiratory tract infections?

    Secondary search

    A Cochrane library search revealed a protocol for vitamin D supplementation for preventing infections in children aged <5 years; however, the results are pending and there are currently no articles for review.

    Commentary

    Acute LRTIs, predominantly pneumonia, are the most common cause of childhood mortality worldwide.8 Poor nutritional status is a well-recognised cause of susceptibility to acute LRTIs in children.9 ,10 Vitamin D deficiency …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors The clinical question was proposed by SRA. Literature search was initially done by SRA and verified by HM. SRA wrote the manuscript and HM revised the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles