A Study of the Status of Vitamin D among Healthy Egyptian Teenagers and its Relation with Height

Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide health problem. High prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency in healthy children and adolescents has been reported worldwide (e.g. India, Turkey, France, Italy, etc.) in the past few years. Vitamin D deficiency during periods of growth can have a negative influence on bone development, causing not only rickets, but also interfering with attainment of genetically programmed height. We aimed in our work to assess the status of vitamin D among healthy adolescents in Egypt and its relation to height percentile. Our study conducted on 180 healthy adolescent males and females aged 10-19 years, randomly selected from Ain Shams University Hospitals. Outpatients with minor intercurrent illness or companions of inpatients were invited to participate in the study after explaining the objective of the study. Samples collected from participants from January 2017 to May 2017. All participants were subjected to full medical history taking, including sun exposure questionnaire, social and dietary questionnaire, General clinical examination including Anthropometric measurements (we