Vitamin D kinetics in the acute phase of critical illness: A prospective observational study

The objective of this study was to assess the vitamin D kinetics in critically ill patients by performing periodic serum vitamin D measurements in short time intervals in the initial phase of a critical illness.

We performed vitamin D serum measurements: at admission and then in 12-hour time intervals. The minimum number of vitamin D measurements was 4, and the maximum was 8 per patient.

A total of 363 patients were evaluated for participation, and 20 met the inclusion criteria. All patients had an initial serum vitamin D level between 10.6 and 39ng/mL. Nineteen patients had vitamin D levels between 10 and 30ng/mL, which means that they had vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency, and only one patient had a normal vitamin D serum plasma level. We observed that the median of the vitamin D level decreases until the fourth measurement then stabilizes around the 4th and 5th measurement and then appears to increase unevenly. The highest drop is at the very beginning.

The vitamin D serum level is changeable in the initial phase of a critical illness. We hypothesize that the serum vitamin D concentration can mirror the severity of illness.