Lack of vitamin D puts pregnant mums at risk, UAE study shows

The results were shown at the Third International Conference on Vitamin D Deficiency and its Complications, held on Friday and Saturday at the Rosewood Abu Dhabi hotel.

ABU DHABI // About 98 per cent of pregnant women examined in a UAE study last year were found to be vitamin D deficient, a conference was told.

The deficiency is associated with an increased risk of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, infants who are small for their gestational age and bacterial vaginosis, said Dr Laila Abdel-Wareth, consultant and chairwoman of the pathology and laboratory medicine department at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC).

Extreme cases of vitamin D deficiency can have serious effects, she said, describing a case of a newborn brought to the hospital because he was convulsing.

“He had very low calcium levels because his mother was extremely deficient [in vitamin D],” she said.

Dr Abdel-Wareth was speaking at the Third International Conference on Vitamin D Deficiency and its Complications, held on Friday and Saturday at the Rosewood Abu Dhabi hotel.

Vitamin D deficiency is a problem in the country despite the year-round sunny weather. About 80 per cent of the population is believed to be deficient, which is often linked with obesity, darker skin and a lack of exposure to sunlight, she said.

“It’s probably to do with the way we avoid the sun here in this country,” Dr Abdel-Wareth said.

One would expect rates to be lower in the Arabian Gulf than in other countries that are less sunny, but Dr Ahmed El Eid, medical director of Dammam Health Authority in Saudi Arabia, said this was not the case.

“We didn’t find a big difference between here and other parts of the world,” he said.

The condition may also be associated with premature delivery, low birth weight, rickets, and neonatal hypocalcemia and seizures.

The US Endocrine Society recommends that women who are pregnant or lactating take 1,500 to 2,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day, while women who are exclusively breastfeeding should take 4,000 to 6,000.

Women who are thinking about getting pregnant should also make sure they are getting enough vitamin D, Dr Abdel-Wareth said.

Doctors recommend getting vitamin D through controlled amounts of sun exposure and taking certain foods and supplements.

Dr Gehad El Ghazali, service lead of clinical immunology at SKMC, said vitamin D plays an important role in reducing what can be an aggressive response to pregnancy by the human body.

“When you supplement with vitamin D, it improves conception and it reduces the symptoms of pre-eclampsia,” he said.

Dr Abdel-Wareth said more randomised control trials were still needed to research the effects of vitamin D deficiency among women in the UAE.

“My advice is for people to live healthy and try to be in the sun as much as they can – go cycling, go walking, enjoy the outdoors – especially when the weather is nice, because it definitely has great effects on their health,” she said.