Exclusive Breastfeeding Increases Child's Risk For Vitamin D Deficiency; Black, Darker-Skinned Children Already Have Increased Risk

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Exclusive breastfeeding can increment a child's risk of developing rachitis because breast milk alone does not provide decent levels of vitamin D, a critical ingredient that helps to absorb calcium and build strong finger cymbals, the New York Times reports. Rickets develops when a child's vitamin D levels ar too low-toned and is characterized by the curved of a child's legs and the softening of other castanets. Some children are symptomless.

Darker-skinned children have a greater risk of vitamin D inadequacy than other children because they do not take in vitamin D as easily through the skin. Sunlight enables the skin to synthesize vitamin D.

Cases of nutritional rickets among infants and loretta Young children in the U.S. have been "accumulating over the concluding decade or so," and children with the term are more likely to be black or swarthy and have been breastfed exclusively for an extended period of time without vitamin supplementation, according to the Times. Some experts say that an increase in infants being solely breastfed, more children drink soda or juice and less milk, and children spending less time in the sunshine could contribute to rachitis re-emerging as a public health problem, the Times reports.

According to the Times, while physicians have known for days that undivided breastfeeding is associated with vitamin D deficiency in infants and rickets, many are "loath to tell anything that might deter breastfeeding." The American Academy of Pediatrics in 2003 recommended that infants world Health Organization are only breastfed receive vitamin D drops day-after-day.

According to one study on rickets and vitamin D that included mostly black and Hispanic infants and toddlers, 40% of the participants had abject levels of vitamin D, 12% were vitamin D deficient, 13 children showed evidence of bone loss and trey children had signs of rickets. The study, published in the June number Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, also establish that breastfeeding without vitamin supplementation was a significant risk factor for rickets.

Study generator Catherine Gordon, director of Children's Hospital Boston's bone health plan, said, "I completely support breastfeeding, and I think breast milk is the perfect nutrient, and the healthiest way to nourish an infant. However, we're finding so many mothers are vitamin D deficient themselves that the milk is thence deficient, so many babies can't sustain their levels up." She added, "They may lead off their lives vitamin D deficient, and then all they're acquiring is vitamin D deficient breast milk" (Rabin, New York Times, 8/26).


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