Vitamin D and nutritional rickets
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
Supplementation with 400 IU per day vitamin D for "dark-skinned, breast-fed infants and children" will help avert a rickets "epidemic," according to a Journal of Pediatrics report on the reemergence of vitamin D-deficient rickets. Shelley Kreiter, MD, et al., Wake Forest University School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, N.C.), report finding 30 cases of rickets among African American children who were breast-fed without vitamin D supplementation in suburban North Carolina, primarily in 1998 and 1999. The researchers note breast-feeding rates among African Americans have risen in the past several years without an accompanying increase in vitamin D supplementation, accounting for the upsurge in rickets incidence