Neonatal Vitamin D Status and Risk of Asthma in Childhood: Results from the D-Tect Study

• Published in: Nutrients 2020-03, Vol.12 (3), p.842
• Main Authors: Thorsteinsdottir, Fanney, Cardoso, Isabel, Keller, Amélie, Stougaard, Maria, Frederiksen, Peder, Cohen, Arieh Sierra, Maslova, Ekaterina, Jacobsen, Ramune, Backer, Vibeke, Heitmann, Berit Lilienthal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Asthma; Asthma - epidemiology; Asthma - etiology; Calciferol; Child; Child, Preschool; Childhood; Children; Denmark - epidemiology; Dietary Supplements; Disease Susceptibility; Ethnicity; Female; Health risks; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Laboratories; Lungs; Male; Neonates; Offspring; Population; Pregnancy; Proportional Hazards Models; Puberty; Public Health Surveillance; Respiratory function; Risk reduction; Seasons; Statistical models; Vitamin D; Vitamin D - blood; Vitamin D - metabolism; Vitamin D Deficiency - blood; Vitamin D Deficiency - complications; Vitamin deficiency; Womens health
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu12030842

low vitamin D status in pregnancy can influence the offspring's lung function and contribute to childhood asthma development. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of neonatal vitamin D status on the development of asthma among children age 3-9 years in a large population sample. in a case-cohort study utilizing a Danish biobank and register data we examined the association between neonatal 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D ) concentrations and incidence of asthma among children aged 3-9 years. Cases of asthma ( = 911) were randomly selected among all cases of asthma in the Danish National Patient Register from children born between 1992 and 2002. The sub-cohort ( = 1423) was randomly selected among all children born in the same period. We used a weighted Cox proportional hazard model assessing the hazard of first asthma diagnoses by quintiles of 25(OH)D . the median 25(OH)D3 (interquartile range) for asthma cases was 23 nmol/L (14-35) and the sub-cohort 25 nmol/L (14-40). The hazard ratio for developing asthma between ages 3 and 9 years was lower for children in the fifth quintile of neonatal 25(OH)D compared to children in the first quintile, both in the unadjusted (0.61 95% CI: 0.46-0.80) and adjusted (0.55 95% CI: 0.39-0.77) analyses. the results from our study suggest that higher neonatal vitamin D concentration may reduce the risk of developing childhood asthma at ages 3-9 years, indicating that neonatal vitamin D status as a proxy of vitamin D status during the prenatal period is important for normal immune- and lung development.