Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in an inpatient population in the Swiss Canton of Basel-Country

Abstract

AIMS Vitamin D deficiency remains very common in the general population. Adding to the importance of this issue is the discovery that vitamin D plays a role in many other tissues apart from the bone, including muscle, brain, prostate, breast and colon. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in a large group of patients hospitalised in the cantonal hospital Basel-Country, and analysed the dependence of serum vitamin D concentrations on gender, time of the year and age. METHODS We retrospectively analysed anonymised data received from the central laboratory of the cantonal hospital Basel-Country. The pool of data contains values obtained between 2013 and 2017 from 8861 patients aged between 18 and 102 years. If sequential measurements were available from a patient, only the first was used for the analyses. Vitamin D deficiency was defined as a serum concentration of 75 nmol/l. RESULTS Mean ± standard deviation serum vitamin D concentration was 52.5 ± 30.5 nmol/l, with women having a higher mean of 55.5 ± 31.5 nmol/l as compared with 48.1 ± 28.6 nmol/l in men (p 75 nmol/l, only 22.1% of measured values indicated adequate vitamin D levels. This issue should be addressed in order to improve quality of life and reduce medical costs.

Keywords

• Vitamin D3 deficiency
• age distribution
• sex distribution
• season