Journal of Obesity & Weight Loss Therapy
Open Access

Vitamin D supplementation improved growth in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Copyright: © 2020  . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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High prevalence of obesity and vitamin D deficiency are two health concerns in childhood and adolescence. The effects of vitamin D supplementation on anthropometric indices were evaluated in several trials, but the results were inconclusive. The present systematic revirew and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the effects of vitamin D supplementation on anthropometric indices of children and adolescents. A systematic search was undertaken in online databases (PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Scineces and Cochrane Library) to detect the relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the effects of vitamin D supplementation on body composition in children and adolescents up to July 2019. In the case of high heterogeneity among studies, fixed or random effects models were used to calculate standardized mean difference (SMD) and its 95% confidence interval (CI). Potential publication bias was checked using Egger’s regression tests. After excluding irrelevant papers, five RCTs which considered as eight separate studies were included in this meta-analysis. Pooled results of the present study stressed on a significant increase in body weight (SMD = 0.148, 95% CI: [0.009, 0.286], p = 0.037), fat free mass (SMD = 0.384, 95% CI: (0.119, 0.649), p = 0.004), and serum 25(OH)D level (SMD = 1.071, 95% CI: (0.591, 1.551), p < 0.0001) compared to the controls. However, no significant change was resulted in height, Body Mass Index (BMI) following vitamin D supplementation. This meta-analysis suggest vitamin D supplementation for improvement of body composition in children and adolescents

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