African-American children in the D.C. area with asthma have lower levels of Vitamin D than non-asthmatic African-American children, according to a study published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
In light of another recent study which found that Vitamin D deficiency may cause prostate cancer among black men, this study provides further evidence that vitamin D plays a significant role in staying healthy.
"It's been well-documented that as a group, African Americans are more likely than other racial groups to have low levels of vitamin D," said Robert Freishtat, MD, MPH, an emergency medicine physician and the study's lead author. "But we were shocked to see that almost all of the African American children with asthma that we tested had low vitamin D levels."
For the study, researchers measured vitamin D levels in blood samples of 85 African American children with asthma, between 6 and 20 years of age and found that after adjusting for difference in age, weight, and the time of year of the testing, the odds of these kids with asthma being vitamin D deficient were nearly twenty times those of health kids. 86% of the participants with asthma had insufficient levels of vitamin D, while only 19% of non-asthmatics experienced these low levels.
"The District of Columbia has among the highest rates of pediatric asthma in the United States, and we're working to find out why," concluded Stephen Teach, MD, MPH, senior author of the study. "For African American kids with asthma, vitamin D testing and ensuring adequate vitamin D intake may need to become necessary steps in their primary care."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
