Pediatricians Vote With Their Clicks: The 5 Most-Read Viewpoints of 2019
At the end of each year, I like to revisit some of the most widely read pediatric viewpoints from the previous 12 months. These five topics—as determined by you, our readers—and the comments they generated underscore how important they are in pediatric practice. Have you learned what your colleagues learned this year? Find out!
#5: Time to Give Up on High-Dose Vitamin D in Infants?
Some data have suggested a potential link between vitamin D deficiency in women during pregnancy or their infants and later development of atopic diseases, though results have been inconsistent. So investigators in Finland performed a large randomized controlled trial of almost 1000 full-term infants to try and definitely answer this question. The babies were given either 10 µg (400 IU) or 30 µg (1200 IU) daily vitamin D during the first 12 months of life.
Bottom line: There were no differences between the two groups in rates of sensitization to food or airborne antigens, nor in development of allergic disease or wheezing. It seems we now have building evidence that in infants with sufficient levels of vitamin D, vitamin D supplementation at higher doses isn't going to prevent allergies.
Viewpoint
There may be more work still to be done to ascertain the value of aggressive vitamin D supplementation of infants, especially in newborns at risk for vitamin D deficiency.
