Low Vitamin D Levels in Healthy Children

Many otherwise healthy U.S. children and adolescents have low vitamin D levels, which may put them at risk for bone diseases such as rickets, a study says.

African-American children, children above age 9 and with low dietary vitamin D intake were the most likely to have low levels of vitamin D in their blood, according to researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Babette Zemel measured blood levels of vitamin D in 382 healthy U.S. children between age 6 and 21. Researchers assessed dietary and supplemental vitamin D intake, as well as body mass and found that more than half of the children had low blood levels of vitamin D. Fifty-five percent of the children had inadequate vitamin D blood levels and 68 percent overall had low blood levels of the vitamin in the wintertime, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The best indicator of a person’s vitamin D status is the blood level of a vitamin D compound called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, Zemel said in a statement. Vitamin D deficiency remains an under-recognized problem overall, and is not well studied in children.