Vitamin-D Status in Type 1 Diabetic Children and Teenagers in Karbala, Iraq

Abstract

background: Vitamin-D deficiency is a very important subject in clinical endocrinology. Low vitamin-D levels detected in many metabolic and immune disorders like Diabetes-Mellitus type 1 (T1DM). Aim: Evaluate vitamin-D status of children & teenagers with T1DM in Karbala, Iraq. Patients and Methods: (171) subjects were enrolled in a case-control study, consisted of two groups; diabetic patients (121) cases (48 male and 73 female), aged 5-16 years and the control non-diabetic (50) (26 female and 24 male) children with matched age and sex. 25 (OH) D3 measured for all subjects, glycosylated hemoglobin was measured for diabetic cases. Results: The level of vitamin-D was significantly lower for diabetic cases (p=.003). Further analysis of vitamin-D using 10ng/ml as cutoff level to assess vitamin-D severe deficiency between diabetic patients and controls shows that percent of severity of vitamin-D deficiency within diabetic cases (42%) was more than control (12%) which was highly significant (p=0.0001). Conclusion: diabetic children are more susceptible to deficiency of vitamin-D than non-diabetics are, with more prevalence of severe deficiency among them. We recommend Measuring of vitamin-D for all T1DM children