Vitamin D Deficiency Dangerous for Infants and Nursing Mothers

A new study has advocated Vitamin D for both infants and nursing mothers not only for promoting bone health but also as being critical in maintaining the immune system lifelong. Deficiencies can cause long-term problems.

Vitamin D deficiency is a common problem across populations and particularly among people with darker skin.

Calcium and Vitamin Supplements
Calcium and vitamin supplements are taken to provide the body with the ''required'' nutrients. Calcium is a mineral found in many foods. Vitamins are very important nutrients for the body.

Nutritional rickets among nursing infants whose mothers have insufficient levels of vitamin D is an increasingly common, yet preventable disorder.

Carol Wagner, MD, Sarah Taylor, MD, and Bruce Hollis, PhD, from the Department of Pediatrics, Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston), have called for clinical studies to determine the dose of vitamin D needed to achieve adequate vitamin D levels in breastfeeding mothers and their infants without toxicity.

In a study, the researchers have pointed out that vitamin D is now viewed not simply as a vitamin with a role in promoting bone health, but as a complex hormone that helps to regulate immune system function.

Rickets
Encyclopedia section of medindia explains in brief about Rickets

Long-term vitamin D deficiency has been associated with immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, type I diabetes, and cancer.

"Vitamin D is a hormone not a vitamin and it is not just for kids anymore," writes Ruth A. Lawrence, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Breastfeeding Medicine, from the Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, in an accompanying editorial.

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"Perhaps the most startling information is that adults are commonly deficit in modern society. Vitamin D is now recognized as a pivotal hormone in the human immune system, a role far beyond the prevention of rickets, as pointed out in the article by Wagner et al in this month's issue of Breastfeeding Medicine," Lawrence added.

The paper has been described in a report in the December of Breastfeeding Medicine, and the official journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.

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