Vitamin D deficiency and rickets seen in more infants, African Americans more susceptible

• In the past 10 years, physicians have been seeing an increase in the number of infants diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency rickets, a disease once considered to be virtually nonexistent, according to an article in the August edition of the Journal of Pediatrics.
• African-Americans are more susceptible to the disease because dark skin inhibits the absorption of sunlight, which is needed to make Vitamin D. "We have seen a 4.4 increase in the number of African-American babies with the disease and a three-fold increase in all babies," said Robert P. Schwartz, M.D., pediatric endocrinologist and an investigator in the study.
• Rickets is the softening and weakening of the bones due to the body's inability to absorb calcium, usually because of a vitamin D deficiency.
• A healthy person gets vitamin D from two sources: food and sunlight.
• Thirty African-American infants were included in the study, beginning in 1988.
• "Rickets, can cause severe health problems including seizures from low calcium levels," Schwartz said.
• "We found that the number of women who are choosing to breastfeed has dramatically increased in the last decade and their babies were not getting adequate amounts of vitamin D added to their diet," said Shelley R. Kreiter, M.D., pediatrician and principal investigator of the study.
• While breastfeeding is the optimal way to ensure that a child receives the proper nutrients and is the ideal nutrition for infants, the vitamin D content of breast milk is low and infants and children need supplemental vitamin D as a complement to their diet when they are exclusively breastfeeding.
• Drs. Schwartz and Kreiter recommend starting the vitamin supplement at birth or by two months of age.
• North Carolina is the only state that has recently begun to distribute vitamins D, A and C in liquid form to all exclusively breastfeeding infants, according to Schwartz.
• The vitamin supplement is not necessary for mothers who choose to feed their infants formula, because vitamin D was added to formula in the 1930s.