Abstract:
Background: There has been a growing interest in the non-skeletal roles of vitamin D particularly its immunemodulatory
properties which has been shown to influence the susceptibility and severity to infections. There is
insufficient data globally on the association between Vitamin D levels and Diarrhoea in children. The objective of
the study was to determine the association between vitamin D levels and diarrhoea in children aged less than five
years.
Methods: Hospital based unmatched case-control study was carried out at MNH between September 2015 and
January 2016. Cases were defined as patients with diarrhoea, Sick controls were patients who did not have
diarrhoea but were admitted for other illnesses and Healthy controls were children who had neither diarrhoea nor
other co-morbid conditions.
Structured questionnaires were used to capture the demographic data and anthropometric measurements. Blood
samples of study participants were tested for serum vitamin D levels and grouped as vitamin D sufficient,
insufficient or deficient (VDD). SPSSv.20 was used to carry out the Statistical analysis. Binary logistic regression,
Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used, a p-value≤ 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.
Results: A total of 188 children under five were recruited in the study at the ratio of 1 case: 3 controls, of these 47
were Cases, 94 were Sick controls and remaining 47 were Healthy controls. The mean age was 17.01 ± 14.8 months.
The mean vitamin D level was 51.18 ± 21.97 nmol/l. Majority of the participants 101 (53.7%) were vitamin D
deficient, 64 (34%) were insufficient and 23 (12.2%) had sufficient vitamin D levels. Sick controls were 3.2 times
more likely to be VDD compared to cases [95% CI 0.14–0.69; p = 0.0015] and 5.03 times when compared to Healthy
controls [95% CI 2.22–11.55; p = 0.000]. Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) was independently associated with
diarrhoea (95% CI: 1.26–5.39, p 0.01).
Conclusions: High prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was found in the children under five years studied. Vitamin
D levels was not found to be specifically associated with diarrhoea in children under five years of age.
