Evaluation of vitamin D profile in juvenile idiopathic arthritis

To observe the association between serum vitamin D level and disease activity in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

The observational study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital during 2017-2019. Patients suffered from JIA were recruited through purposive sampling which was stratified by the disease activity based on the Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score 27 (JADAS27) criteria. Serum vitamin D was estimated alongside other laboratory parameters. The numerical and categorical variables were analysed with appropriate statistical tests.

40 subjects were studied where inactive disease was observed in nine subjects (22.5%), five subjects (12.5%) were found to be in low disease activity and moderate disease activity groups each, and twenty-one subjects (52.5%) had high disease activity. Considering the total sample size of the study, the mean (SD) JADAS27 score and serum vitamin D level were observed to be 12.02 (11.31) and 23.10 (5.93) respectively. A negative correlation was found between the JADAS27 score and serum vitamin D (r= -0.67). The corrected Chi-square test had revealed significant association between the status of serum vitamin-D and disease activity groups (=16.28; p < .001).

In JIA, higher grade of disease activity was found to be significantly associated with lower serum vitamin D.