March 1, 2016

expert reaction to study investigating vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy and bone health in babies

Publishing in The Lancet journal, a group of scientists have looked at whether babies born to mothers whose diets were supplemented with vitamin D during their pregnancy have a greater whole-body bone mineral content (BMC) than those whose mothers diets were unchanged, and report no difference in neonatal whole-body BMC between these two groups.

Dr Benjamin Jacobs, Consultant Paediatrician, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, said:

“Although this study failed to show a benefit to the bone mass of the children born across the whole year, the positive findings are in my opinion more important. The study did show a benefit to babies’ bones if they were born in winter. It also showed a dose of 1000 units of vitamin D gave the desired blood levels in the mothers (we only currently recommend 400 units) – so, the accumulating evidence suggests that the dose of 400 is not enough. This study therefore needs to be taken into account when reviewing the current Vitamin D advice particularly for pregnant women in the UK and beyond.

“The study also showed 1000 units of vitamin D to be safe in pregnancy and that is really valuable data because there are several other reasons for giving pregnant women Vitamin D apart from the potential benefit to the babies bones (e.g. benefit to mothers bones, prevention of neonatal convulsions, etc.).”

‘Maternal gestational vitamin D supplementation and offspring bone health (MAVIDOS): a multicentre, double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial’ by Cyrus Cooper et al. published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology on Tuesday 1 March 2016. 

Declared interests

Dr Benjamin Jacobs: “Research grants and honoraria from Consillient Health, Danone, Kellogg’s, BetterYou, Internis and Alexion.”