Vitamin D: Knight in shining armour for malnourished kids

Turns out, vitamin D helps improve the overall health among malnourished children.

According to a joint study conducted by the University of the Punjab Pakistan and the Queen Mary University of London, high dose of vitamin D supplements improves weight gain and the development of language and motor skills in malnourished children.

Vitamin D - the 'sunshine vitamin' - is well known for its beneficial effects on bone and muscle health, and a study by Queen Mary researchers last year found that it could also protect against colds and flu. Now new research from the team has revealed further benefits.

Lead author Javeria Saleem said, "High-dose vitamin D significantly boosted weight gain in malnourished children. This could be a game-changer in the management of severe acute malnutrition, which affects 20 million children worldwide."

Senior author Adrian Martineau added, "This is the first clinical trial in humans to show that vitamin D can affect brain development, lending weight to the idea that vitamin D has important effects on the central nervous system.

"Further trials in other settings are now needed to see whether our findings can be reproduced elsewhere. We are also planning a larger trial in Pakistan to investigate whether high-dose vitamin D could reduce mortality in children with severe malnutrition."

High energy food sachets are the standard treatment for the condition, but they contain relatively modest amounts of vitamin D.

In the study, 185 severely malnourished children aged 6-58 months were treated with an eight-week course of high energy food sachets and were also randomised to either receive additional high-dose vitamin D (two doses of 200,000 international units / 5 milligrams, given by mouth) or placebo.

After eight weeks, vitamin D supplementation led to clinically significant improvements in weight (on average gaining an extra 0.26 kg compared to the control group).

Vitamin D supplementation also resulted in substantial reductions in the proportion of children with delayed motor development, delayed language development and delayed global development (reaching certain milestones such as learning to walk or talk).

Senior author Rubeena Zakar added, "Our findings could be a great help to the Health Ministry of Pakistan in dealing with the issue of malnutrition."

The study appears in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.