Vitamin D Supplementation Modestly Reduces Serum Iron Indices of Healthy Arab Adolescents.

Vitamin D deficiency has been shown to affect iron status via decreased calcitriol production, translating to decreased erythropoiesis. The present study aimed to determine for the first time whether vitamin D supplementation can affect iron levels among Arab adolescents. A total of 125 out of the initial 200 Saudi adolescents with vitamin D deficiency (serum 25(OH)D < 50 nmol/L) were selected from the Vitamin D-School Project of King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Calculated adiposity and lipid indices in healthy Arab children as influenced by vitamin D status.

Background: Both childhood obesity and vitamin D deficiency are common in the Middle East. This study aims to determine whether the associations of vitamin D status to traditional anthropometric parameters hold true for nonconventional measures of adiposity, such as body adiposity index (BAI), a measure of body fat percentage, waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), and lipid indices, in apparently healthy Arab children.

Methods: A total of 4183 apparently healthy Saudi school students (1906 boys; 2277 girls) aged 12 to 17 years were recruited in this cross-sectional study.