Vitamin D supplements do not prevent bone fractures in children, finds study

A significant scientific trial led by Queen Mary College of London and the Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being has discovered that vitamin D dietary supplements don’t improve bone power or stop bone fractures in kids with vitamin D deficiency. The findings problem broadly held perceptions regarding the consequences of vitamin D on bone well being.

Round one-third of youngsters have no less than one fracture earlier than the age of 18. This can be a main world well being problem, as childhood fractures can result in life years of incapacity and/or poor high quality of life. The potential for vitamin D dietary supplements to enhance bone strength has attracted rising curiosity in recent times, primarily based on vitamin D’s position in selling bone mineralization. Nonetheless, clinical trials designed to check whether or not vitamin D dietary supplements can stop bone fractures in kids haven’t beforehand been carried out.

Working with companions in Mongolia, a setting with a very excessive fracture burden and the place vitamin D deficiency is very prevalent, researchers from Queen Mary and Harvard carried out a scientific trial to find out if vitamin D supplementation would lower threat of bone fractures or improve bone power in schoolchildren. The examine, printed in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, is the most important randomized managed trial of vitamin D supplementation ever carried out in kids.

Over the course of three years, 8,851 schoolchildren aged 6–13 dwelling in Mongolia obtained a weekly oral dose of vitamin D supplementation. 95.5% of contributors had vitamin D deficiency at baseline, and examine dietary supplements had been extremely efficient in boosting vitamin D ranges into the conventional vary. Nonetheless, they’d no impact on fracture threat or on bone power, measured in a subset of 1,438 contributors utilizing quantitative ultrasound.

The trial findings are more likely to immediate scientists, medical doctors and public well being specialists to re-consider the consequences of vitamin D dietary supplements on bone health.

Dr. Ganmaa Davaasambuu, Affiliate Professor on the Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being, mentioned, “The absence of any impact of sustained, beneficiant vitamin D supplementation on fracture threat or bone power in vitamin D poor kids is hanging. In adults, vitamin D supplementation works greatest for fracture prevention when calcium is given on the similar time—so the truth that we didn’t provide calcium alongside vitamin D to trial contributors might clarify the null findings from this examine.”

Professor Adrian Martineau, Lead of the Middle for Immunobiology at Queen Mary College of London, added, “It is usually essential to notice that kids who had been discovered to have rickets throughout screening for the trial had been excluded from participation, as it might not have been moral to supply them placebo (dummy treatment).”

“Thus, our findings solely have relevance for children with low vitamin D standing who haven’t developed bone problems. The significance of satisfactory vitamin D consumption for prevention of rickets shouldn’t be ignored, and UK authorities steering recommending a every day consumption of 400 IU vitamin D stays essential and may nonetheless be adopted.”