Status of Serum Vitamin D Levels in Pregnant women from Balochistan

Background: Malnutrition mainly micronutrients malnutrition is one of the tasks of public health problem in
Pakistan.
Aim: To determine the vitamin D status in pregnant women of Baluchistan.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 101 pregnant women who were recruited from the public
teaching hospital. Total 3 ml of blood was collected from all the subjects and serum was separated after
centrifugation. ELISA technique was used to determine serum vitamin D levels and all the samples were analyzed
using CobasE411 analyzer. Data analysis was performed by using SPSS version 22.
Results: The pregnant women showed lower levels of vitamin D with a rate of 51% population. Other women
presented with normal or high serum vitamin D because they were utilizing nutritional sources of vitamin D and
also sufficient exposure to the sunlight was available.
Conclusion: Vitamin D deficiency is a growing public health problem which should be addressed seriously
specially in the pregnant women. Food decreases this hypovitaminosis D it should also be addressed at National
level like that of Vitamin A and Iodine supplementation programs.