The Association Of Vitamin D Deficiency With Hemogram-Derived Inflammatory Biomarkers In Children*

Abstract

Background and aims: One of the extraosseous effects of vitamin D is that it is a potent modulator of inflammatory processes. Many studies have demonstrated the inverse association between vitamin D and inflammation. Therefore, we hypothesize that vitamin D deficiency may affect the inflammatory markers derived from hemogram parameters [neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR), lymphocyte to monocyte ratio (LMR), platelet dis-tribution width (PDW), red blood cell distribution width (RDW)] in healthy children.Methods and results: We conducted a retrospective study on healthy children. From 2015 to 2020, 16,321 children with simultaneous vitamin D and hemogram measurements were identified from electronic records. Participants were divided into 2 groups according to whether they had vitamin D deficiency or not. The relationship between vitamin D status and the levels of in-flammatory markers was analyzed. All inflammatory markers showed statistically significant dif-ferences between vitamin D status (p < 0.001 for all). Vitamin D levels were significantly negatively correlated with NLR (r =-0.285), PLR (r =-0.257), PDW (r =-0.181), and positively correlated with LMR (r = 0.218), and RDW (r = 0.057). In logistic regression analysis, age (OR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.14-1.16), gender (OR = 1.66, 95% CI: 1.54-1.78), LMR (OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.95-0.98), PLR (OR = 1.003, 95% CI: 1.001-1.004), and RDW (OR = 1.10, 95%CI: 1.07-1.13) were found to be independent predictors for vitamin D deficiency.Conclusions: Statistically significant differences were detected between vitamin D status and in-flammatory parameters. However, the difference between the median values of vitamin D groups was very small and the degree of correlation was very weak. Therefore, the clinical significance of the difference should be questioned.(c) 2022 The Italian Diabetes Society, the Italian Society for the Study of Atherosclerosis, the Ital-ian Society of Human Nutrition and the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, Federico II University. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.