Assessment of Vitamin D Status and Response to Vitamin D3 in Obese children and adolescents

Introduction: Increased body weight and obesity in childhood and adolescence are becoming more and more important unfavorable factors that can cause extremely adverse consequences and need close attention of physicians of any specialty. When obesity starts, its reverse is difficult, and it can influence on the future life and is related to risk of CVD, some type of cancers and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Along with the high prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome in pediatric patients, children and adolescents in the majority of countries are diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D has is essential in bone health in children and adolescents. Its deficiency can cause secondary hyperparathyroidism and skeletal conditions such as rickets, osteopenia, osteoporosis and osteomalacia. Recently, studies have shown a wide range of health problems such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, infections, autoimmune diseases and common cancers have been related to low vitamin D level. The aim of this review was to assess Vitamin D status and response to its supplementation in obese children and adolescents . Methods : For this review, we studied the articles from 2000 to 2019 in PubMed and Scopus, by searching obesity AND overweight AND children AND adolescent vitamin D . Results : Studies have shown an inverse association between adiposity and serum status of 25- hydroxyvitamin D in children and adolescents. Compared with normal weight children, overweight/obese children have higher prevalence rate of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and also overweight and obese children need higher doses of Vitamin D3 . Conclusion : Overweight and obese children are more likely to have vitamin D deficiency. More attention is needed to be paid to overweight and obese children for prevention of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency .

Keywords:

vitamin D , obesity , children , adolescents