Comparing Different Amounts of Vitamin D Supplementation to Preschool Children Living in Northern and Southern Sweden

Detailed Summary

Vitamin D has a range of biological effects of public health relevance. Vitamin D status is assessed on levels of its metabolite 25-hydroxyvitamin D \[25(OH)D\], where levels \< 50 nmol/L indicate insufficiency. Despite studies indicating that the vitamin D intake among Swedish children are significantly below recommendations, little is known of their vitamin D status. The investigators have recently found inadequate vitamin D status in pre-school children living in northern Sweden, especially in dark-skinned children and during the winter months despite vitamin D intakes meeting the recommendations. Overall, 25% of the light skinned and 40% of the dark skinned children had S-25(OH) D \<50 nmol/L (Öhlund I, unpublished data). The aim is to examine which amount of vitamin D is needed to maintain or increase S-25(OH)D to ≥50 nmol/L among 97.5% of the participants regardless of skin color or geographic location (northern or southern Sweden). Furthermore the investigators will examine if vitamin D status affects on health markers as bone density, blood pressure, serum lipids, fatty acids, inflammatory and immunological markers and mental wellbeing. Children aged 5-8 years living either northern (Umeå) or southern Sweden (Malmö) will be recruited to this trial during November-December 2012. They will be randomized to a vitamin D supplement of either 10 or 25 g per day, or in Malmö also placebo to be used for three months. The randomization will be stratified according to skin color (light or dark) according to a method using visual inspection and interviews of parents/guardians. The investigators will use a 2×2×2 factorial design to investigate the effects of two different doses of vitamin D (10 µg and 25 µg) in children with dark and light skin color, living in northern (Umeå) and southern (Malmö), Sweden. In order to achieve a moderate difference between groups (effect size 0.25) 20 children per group are required (power\> 87%, alpha = 0.05). With an estimated dropout of 10%, a total of 220 children will be included. At baseline, the participants will undergo blood sampling for S-25(OH)D and other biomarkers, blood pressure and anthropometrical measurements, including bone densitometry and body composition using air displacement pletysmography, and the parents will answer a questionnaire on behavioral and emotional problems in the participating child using the Child Behavior Checklist. These measurements will be repeated at follow-up in February-March 2013.

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