Objective: To investigate vitamin D levels in patients with recurrent wheeze at early ages of childhood.
Methods: In the present cross-sectional study, serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D [25 (OH)D], levels which is known as an indicator of vitamin D adequacy, was examined in infants with three or more wheezing attacks.
Results: A total of 186 infants with recurrent wheezing were included in the study along with 118 healthy control peers. The recurrent wheezing study participants were classified into two groups according to Asthma Predictive Index (API) positivity and compared to control subjects regarding their serum vitamin D status. The API negative group had the lowest mean serum 25 (OH)D level (n = 121; 22.71 ± 10.76 ng/ml) followed by API positive group (n = 65; 24.08 ± 9.02 ng/ml) compared to healthy group (26.24 ± 11.88 ng/ml) (p < 0.05). In addition, higher vitamin D deficiency was observed in infants in API negative group (52.1 %; p < 0.01) and API positive group (38.5 %; p < 0.05) than control group (31.4 %).
Conclusions: Low levels of 25 (OH)D were detected in infants with two different phenotypes of recurrent wheeze. Vitamin D deficiency may play a role in the pathogenesis of infants with recurrent wheezing.
Keywords: Allergic sentisization; Asthma predictive index; Recurrent wheezing; Vitamin D.