More than a billion may suffer from vitamin D deficiency. Consequences may be more severe than thought. Prominent clinician calls for action.
Clinicians estimate that about half of the European population is suffering from mild vitamin D deficiency. Now a prominent European clinician has called for international action to address the problems which may lead to increased osteoporosis, cancer, and other diseases.
Vitamin D was discovered about a century ago. Its widespread use in infants has virtually eradicated severe vitamin D deficiency and rickets. The elderly and immigrant populations with darker skin are even the populations most seriously and most frequently deficient. Moreover insufficient vitamin D may have broader health consequences than previously thought.
Speaking at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Glasgow, Professor Roger Bouillon of the University of Leuven called for concerted research projects to back up the animal work linking vitamin D insufficiency with global health risks such as osteoporotic fractures, cancer and auto-immune diseases.
Vitamin D status can be readily estimated by measurements of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and optimal health requires at least 20 ng 25(OH)D/ml. By this definition, half of the over 60s in Europe are already deficient. In some populations this figure is even higher, for example 2/3 of the UK Pakistani population is deficient.
Vitamin D can either be obtained from food but natural food sources except fatty fish has a low vitamin D content. Exposure to sunlight can also produce vitamin D but the very same ultraviolet light is also responsible for accelerated ageing and cancer of the skin. Therefore, vitamin D intake should be increased by food supplementation.
Professor Bouillon said: