NEW YORK—One in seven U.S. teens is vitamin-D deficient, according to a new study by researchers in the Department of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College. Vitamin-D deficiency in children can lead to rickets; it is linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, immune dysfunction and hypertension in adults.
The findings, published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics, were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting in May 2008.
Using the proposed criteria that the minimum acceptable serum vitamin D level be raised from 11 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) to at least 20 ng/mL, the study found more than half of Black teens are vitamin D deficient, and girls had more than twice the risk of deficiency compared to boys. Overweight teens had nearly double the risk of their normal-weight counterparts.