Vitamin D Supplements Aid Pregnant Women from Respiratory Diseases
by Yvonne Magtibay in Nutrition on Jun 20, 2011
The Dutch researchers reported that Vitamin D supplements for pregnant women may actually help in preventing a respiratory disease called RSV, which can further lead to pneumonia and other potentially life-threatening illnesses especially to newborns.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RSV or Respiratory Syncytial Virus is considered as the most common cause of pneumonia and inflammation in the lower airways in infants in the United States. Most of the children recover from this, however, on the contrary there are still more children who are hospitalized and develop respiratory problems.
Dr. Louis Bont, the lead researcher from the department of pediatric infectious diseases at Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital and University Medical Center in Utrecht stated, “We have no treatment for RSV. The only thing we can do is to try to prevent the disease.” He further noted that one way to prevent RSV is for pregnant women to take supplemental vitamin D. There are guidelines that actually prescribe such supplement.
Bont explained, “If pregnant women do not take vitamin D supplements, they have low vitamin D levels in the umbilical cord blood and then the children have a severely increased risk of RSV. Intake of vitamin D during late stage of pregnancy is vital to prevent RSV, and probably other respiratory diseases as well.”
Each year, there are 5 million children who were infected by RSV. The researchers suggest that if pregnant women took in Vitamin D for supplements, then there would be about 20% of those infections might be prevented.
Vitamin D, as Bont explained, “Shapes and matures the immune systems,” which is one of the most important functions of the vitamin.
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