TO Estimate the Prevalence of Vitamin D Deficiency and its Associated Risk Factors in Rural and Urban Population of District Bathinda Punjab

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the objective of determining the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the rural and urban population of district Bathinda. 350 Healthy volunteers (175 each from the rural and urban area) participated and their serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D concentration was estimated. newline In the rural and urban area, out of 175 healthy individuals each, vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency was observed to be in 94.3% and 95.4% of subjects respectively with prevalence of 94.8%. On gender basis, females show a higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency than males and a gender-specific significant difference was observed (p= and#8804;0.05) in both the areas. The high BMI values were associated with low vitamin D level of both rural and urban area. Levels of vitamin D was found to be higher in the non-smokers (p= and#8804;0.05), non-sunscreen users (p= and#8804;0.01), in persons doing regular exercise (p= and#8804;0.01), and in persons taking non-vegetarian diet (p= and#8804;0.01), or the sea food (p= and#8804;0.01) and the difference was found to be highly significant. newline Individuals with dark complexion were more prevalent to hypovitaminosis of vitamin D as difference in the two groups was highly significant (p= and#8804;0.01) in both the areas. newline The present study demonstrated a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the local population of district Bathinda. newline