Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency

rickets in adolescent school girls

in Western region, Saudi Arabia
article of journal

Conducted by: Guided by:

Zahra Almousa, Marwa Alsaleh Dr. Bibi Mariam
Outline
• Objective
• Methods
• Result
• Inclusion criteria
• Purpose of the study
• Strength & weakness of the study
• Effect of chance & bias
• Conclusion
• Reference
Definition of rickets :
Rickets is a childhood bone
condition wherein the bones
soften and become prone to
fractures and irregularities.
The main cause of rickets is
a lack of vitamin D, but
people can also inherit a
certain type of rickets
Objective:
• To determine the prevalence of vitamin
D deficiency rickets among female
adolescents and assess its relation to
calcium intake and sun exposure.
Methods:
:Design Duration:
Cross sectional - between October 2003 -
:Location February 2004
Saudi Arabia (Jeddah) Number of participant:
:Tools 600 school girls between
Questionnaires 12-15 years old
Statistical analysis (spss)
Inclusion criteria :

Four hundred and thirty-three students were

included in the study, who had no history of renal,
hepatic diseases, or malabsorption, no family
history of rickets, and were not on anti-convulsant
therapy or vitamin supplementations.
Result:

Out of 350 (81%) 40% had 61%

Were
433 had Low very Low
asymptomatic
vitamin D vitamin D
cases level level
Result:
There was a positive correlation between
low calcium in the diet and less sun
exposure to low levels of vitamin D.

40% had
96% had 89% had normal serum
normal serum normal serum alkaline
phosphate calcium phosphatase
levels
Purpose of the study:

• to screen adolescent school girls aged 12-15

years, in which a physiological growth spurt
occurs and vitamin D deficiency can occur
quickly and asymptomatically.
Strength and weakness of the study:
:Strength
- It’s a unique study because there is only few studies done to
assess the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in healthy
adolescent females and the last study was in 1992.
The study is successful in conducting the data since it ends up -
with worthful results and it shows a higher prevalence of vitamin
.D deficiency than in other studies
:Weakness
Inaccurate data cause there is unanswered parts of the-
.questionnaire by the subjects
Effect of chance and bias:
• There is an error (chance) detected in the study as
shown in the follow part:
• Out of 150, only 31 (21%) took near the daily requirement
of milk such as >3 cups or equivalent of milk products, but
that was not statistically significant with p value of 0.13
due to the girls who answered this part of the
questionnaire were few.
• Since the p value 0.13 is more than 0.05 so that chance is a
likely explanation for the finding
Conclusion:
This research was funded by King Abdulaziz University,
Jeddah to assess the relationship between vitamin D
deficiency rickets and calcium intake and sun exposure.
They use random selection to choose their subjects and
use questionaries to collect the data. at the end the
result reflect the research question by show high
prevalence of vitamin D deficiency is attributed to both
lack of dietary dairy intake and to lack of sun exposure.
Also, the results indicates the appropriateness of the
method used in this study.
Reference:

Siddiqui, A., & Kamfar, H. (2007). Prevalence of vitamin D

deficiency rickets in adolescent school girls in Western
.region, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Medical Journal, 28(3)
Thank you