Surprising new study reveals maternal vitamin D status may not benefit bone health in offspring

This month's Paper of the Month is from British Journal of Nutrition and is entitled ‘Predicted vitamin D status during pregnancy in relation to offspring forearm fractures in childhood: a study from the Danish National Birth Cohort'. The authors discuss their findings and implications for public health advice on vitamin supplementation during pregnancy.IntroductionVitamin D supplementation during pregnancy is recommended in many countries to secure optimal vitamin D status and improve maternal and infant health outcomes. However, the results of our study surprisingly indicate that vitamin D supplementation may have some disadvantages in relation to bone health in offspring. It has been hypothesised that optimal vitamin D status during pregnancy may prevent the development of osteoporosis, but no strong evidence exists for an association between maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy and offspring bone development and fracture risk. Therefore, we designed a study within the large prospective Danish National Birth Cohort, where we examined whether maternal vitamin D status was related to diagnoses of offspring forearm fractures recorded in the Danish National Patient Register. Forearm fractures seem to be a good indicator of low bone mass compared with other types of fractures, because they often occur because of falls on the same plane, and contrary to fractures caused by collisions or downhill falls, they do not require great impact forces. Main results from the study...
Source: The Nutrition Society - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: news