Vitamin D helps to improve health of malnourished children

New Delhi : Vitamin D can efficiently help in improving the overall health of malnourished children, finds a study.

As per findings of joint study by the University of the Punjab Pakistan and the Queen Mary University of London, increasing the dosage of Vitamin D supplements helps in weight gain and the development of language and motor skills in malnourished children.

Vitamin D is famous for its beneficial effects on bone and muscle health, the study also revealed that it helps in fighting cold and flu.

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."

The study was conducted on 185 severely malnourished children aged 6-58 months, they were given treatment for eight weeks to learn the results. 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).

The study has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.