Status of Vitamin-D Deficiency in Sickle Cell Disease in Adults

Abstract

BACKGROUND Sickle cell disease is a prevalent and a widely distributed disease in India. It has been found to be associated with multiple complications such as vaso-occlusion and painful crisis. The aim of the study is to assess the status of vitamin D deficiency amongst adult SCD patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross sectional study with appropriate control group was conducted amongst the patients of MY Hospital, Indore. The Sample included 50 cases and 50 controls. Selection of cases was done on the predefined criteria. The cases and controls were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The participants who consent to participate were included in the study. The information related to clinical, biochemical parameters were obtained from both the groups. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS software. The comparison between the groups was done using Man Whitney U test, Chi square test and correlation was obtained using Spearman's correlation coefficient. RESULTS Results of the study showed presence of vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency amongst 92% of cases. The level of vitamin D showed significant correlation with frequency of painful crisis, blood transfusion and hospitalization. CONCLUSION It can be concluded that level of vitamin D decreases in SCD patients which can lead to complications such as painful crisis. So, vitamin D supplements can be given to such population to improve the condition of SCD patients.

A Meta-analysis on Vitamin D Deficiency in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

“…A similar association between the VDD and the vaso-occlusive crisis of SCD was shown also by Lee et al [32] and Gupta and Katariya [40]. By contrast, some of the included studies did not find a significant association between VDD and these complications [28,31,47].…”

“…Several peculiar characteristics of SCD could explain the high prevalence and increased risk of VDD among patients with SCD, such as: impaired absorption by the damaged intestinal mucosa as a complication of SCD; decreased level of vitamin D binding protein due to the inflammatory condition in SCD; increased physiological demands due to the fast turnover in the process of erythrocytosis in SCD; and reduced levels of nutritional status, physical activity, and exercise in patients with SCD [12,28,30,40,44,46,49].…”

“…Full texts of 40 studies were screened, and 15 studies were subsequently excluded because of insufficient data to estimate the outcomes of interest (Figure 1). A total of 25 studies published from 1993 to 2019 that met the eligibility for data were used for qualitative and quantitative syntheses: 10 studies from the Americas [12,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]; six studies from Asia [37][38][39][40][41][42]; five studies from Europe [43][44][45][46][47]; two studies from Africa [48,49], one study that used samples from both Jamaica and West Africa [50], and one study that used samples from both Brazil and Nigeria [51].…”