Vitamin D Deficiency, Prevalence and Treatment in Neonatal Period

Maternal vitamin D deficiency is an important risk factor that causes infantile rickets in the neonatal and infantile period. The aim of this study was to review the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and treatment of vitamin D deficiency and the follow-ups with infants and their mothers by the neonatal intensive care unit of Afiyet Hospital in Turkey.

Calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P) and 25 (OH) vitamin D were studied and prospectively recorded in infants and their mothers detected to have hypocalcemia during routine biochemistry tests performed on the third postnatal day of the patients follow up and treated with different diagnoses.

A total of 2,460 infants were admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit between August 2014 and January 2018. Of the infants included in the study, 324 (66.1%) were male and 166 (33.8%) were female, and 366 (74.6%) of them had been delivered by cesarean section (C/S), 124 (25.3%) of them had been delivered by Normal Spontaneous Delivery (NSD). Hypocalcemia was detected in 490 (19.9%) of the infants. In a total of 190 (38.7%) infants and 86 mothers (17.5%), the levels of 25 (OH) vitamin D were found to be below the laboratory detection limit of <3 ng/ml. When vitamin D deficiency + insufficiency is assessed by season, 151 of them were found to be in summer (30.99%), 118 in spring (24.18%), 117 in the winter season(23.87%), and 93 in autumn(18.97%), respectively. There was a statistically significant positive correlation of 78.7% between the vitamins D values of the mothers and the infants (p: 0.000, p<0.05).

This study conducted that a positive correlation of between the vitamin D values of the mothers and the infants. In order to prevent maternal vitamin D deficiency, the appropriate dose of prophylaxis providing optimal levels of vitamin D and should be given by according to the levels of 25 (OH) D vitamin during pregnancy.