Vitamin D deficiency common with brittle bones

In all regions of the world, more than half of postmenopausal women with the crippling bone disease osteoporosis are vitamin D deficient, regardless of age, latitude or season, researchers from US, the Netherlands and UK said here last week at the 11th World Congress on the Menopause.

According to the investigators, "These results underscore the need to improve physician and patient awareness of the importance of adequate vitamin D supplementation in postmenopausal women with Osteoporosis."

The researchers, led by Dr. Mary K. Beard, of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, conducted two cross-sectional studies to evaluate vitamin D levels in more than 4,100 postmenopausal women older than 55 years old who had been diagnosed with Osteoporosis in different parts of the world.

Vitamin D deficiency
Alternative names
Osteomalacia in children; Rickets; Renal rickets

Definition

Rickets is a childhood disorder involving softening and weakening of the bones. It is primarily caused by lack of vitamin D, calcium, or phosphate.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors

Vitamin D may be absorbed from food by the intestines or may be produced by the skin when the skin is exposed to sunlight. In its active form, vitamin D acts as a hormone to regulate calcium absorption from the intestine and to regulate levels of calcium and phosphate in the bones.

Sunlight is important to skin production of vitamin D, and environmental conditions where sunlight exposure is limited may reduce this source of vitamin D. Lack of vitamin D production by the skin may occur if a person is confined indoors, or works indoors during the daylight hours, or lives in climates with little exposure to sunlight.

The prevalence of vitamin D inadequacy by individual regions was found to be 52 percent in North America, 52 percent in Europe, 82 percent in the Middle East, 51 percent in Latin America, 63 percent in Asia and 59 percent in the Pacific Rim.

Figures were found to be similar in winter and summer.

Dr. Fabio Massari, from the Institute of Metabolic Investigations in Buenos Aires, who led a previous similar study of Vitamin D deficiency among Argentinean women, said that normal aging involves a reduction in the production of vitamin D by sun-exposed skin. Absorption of vitamin D precursors from foods and conversion of vitamin D into its active form also diminish as people get older, he added.

Massari said all osteoporotic patients should have their vitamin D status checked because it "can certainly influence the outcomes of any (bone strengthening) treatment."