HealthNotes

It’s common for exclusively breast-fed infants to be vitamin D deficient, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that these infants be given 400 IU of oral vitamin D daily soon after birth. However, recent research may offer an alternative to giving infants a vitamin D supplement—if nursing mothers supplement with high doses of vitamin D₃, infants may get the D they need. The new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, randomly divided 334 mothers and their four to six week old, nursing infants into three groups: in the first group, both the mothers and the infants received 400 IU of vitamin D₃ daily; in the second and third groups, the mothers received 2,400 IU or 6,400 IU, respectively, of vitamin D₃ daily, while their infants received a placebo. All of the groups followed the supplement plan for six months. Maternal vitamin D levels were measured at the beginning of the study, and then monthly; infant vitamin D levels were measured at the beginning of the study, and then at months four and seven. Here is what researchers found when they compared the effectiveness of maternal vitamin D₃ supplementation to maternal and infant supplementation:

• Breastfeeding infants receiving a placebo whose mothers were taking 6,400 IU daily had vitamin D levels similar to breastfeeding infants in the group where both the mother and infant were receiving 400 IU daily.
• Mothers receiving 6,400 IU daily safely increased their vitamin D to adequate levels compared with mothers receiving other amounts of vitamin D₃.

These findings suggest that if you’re a nursing mother, supplementing with 6,400 IU of vitamin D₃ daily may be an alternative strategy to current vitamin D recommendations for exclusively breast-fed infants. This research is important because vitamin D plays such an essential role in childhood health; not only is it linked to children’s muscle development, but vitamin D deficiency has also been linked to a variety of illnesses, including rickets, a childhood disease that causes bone malformations.

Source: Pediatrics