Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Vitamin D plays an important role on musculoskeletal composition, but new evidences highlight others possible pleiotropic effects on many tissues and also metabolic functions. Vitamin D insufficiency should be associated with all-cause mortality, in particular with cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. International studies suggested that 25(OH)D level sufficiency should be established at 30 ng/ml, insufficiency between 30 and 20 ng/ml and deficiency lower than 20 ng/ml.

Methods: To evaluate vitamin D status, we studied vitamin D levels in a population of normal weight (NW) and obese (OB) children: 113 were NW children, 105 M and 8 F, 46 prepubertal and 67 pubertal children and 444 were OB, 219 M and 225 F, 299 prepubertal and 145 pubertal children.

Results: Only 28.3% of NW children showed normal levels of vitamin D, 49.6% showed vitamin D insufficiency while 22.1% showed a clear vitamin D deficiency. Among vitamin D deficient children, 8.8% demonstrated vitamin D levels lower than 14.5 ng/ml. Obese children showed 18.9% of subjects with normal levels of vitamin D, 36.7% of subjects with vitamin D insufficiency and 44.4% of subjects a status of vitamin D deficiency. Among these, 23.2% showed vitamin D levels lower than 14.5 ng/ml. Mean vitamin D levels in NW children (27.3±1.2 ng/ml) resulted higher than in OB children (21.8±0.6 ng/ml). No differences have been found between prepubertal and pubertal children in terms of vitamin D levels.

Conclusions: Our pediatric population demonstrates a low percentage of vitamin D levels sufficiency. In particular obese children show only 19% of subjects with normal levels while almost half of this population show a clear insufficiency. Further studies are needed to support these results and to evaluate the possible metabolic consequences.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.