Taking a vitamin D supplementation can protect children from many respiratory infections in winter, a new study says.
Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) initiated to analyze the challenge of maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin D in the body during winter.
Carlos Camargo and colleagues used data from the Blue Sky Study. The study conducted by Harvard researchers included Mongolian schoolchildren, at a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency.
A blood test conducted at the beginning of the study showed all the participants having a vitamin D deficiency.
Participants were divided into two groups - one receiving vitamin D and milk daily and another group taking only milk. At the end of the study, the investigators found the group of children receiving vitamin D experiencing very few respiratory infections compared to the other group.
"Our randomized controlled trial shows that vitamin D has important effects on infection risk," Carlos Camargo, the study's corresponding author, said in a statement. "In almost 250 children with low blood levels of vitamin D during winter, we found that taking a daily vitamin D supplement cut in half the risk of a respiratory infection."
Vitamin D is essential for bone growth and a deficiency can lead to rickets, a bone -softening disease among young children.
According to experts from American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children should be given foods rich with vitamin D like milk, cereal, orange juice, yogurt and margarine and it's essential for children to take vitamin D daily as it's difficult to maintain the adequate levels only through diets. Finding the life-long health benefits of vitamin D, the AAP revised its vitamin D supplementation from 200 IU to 400 IU per day.
Some of the natural sources of vitamin D apart from the sunshine include shiitake and button mushrooms, oily fish (tuna, mackerel, trout, herring, sardines, kipper, carp, anchovies and orange roughy), beef liver, cheese, and egg yolks.
