Risk of vitamin D deficit in asthmatic children hospitalized in the north area of Santiago

Introduction: in recent years asthma hospitalization rate in Chilean children has doubled. Numerous studies have shown an association between hypovitaminosis D and frequent, severe asthmatic exacerbations in children. Objective: to estimate the risk of vitamin D (vitD) deficiency and insufficiency in hospitalized asthmatic children compared with patients who are monitored on an outpatient basis and do not have records of hospitalization in one year. Material and methods: an observational, analytic, and case-control study carried out in one calendar year including asthmatic children between 5 and 15 years of age. This study registered: sociodemographic and clinical data, asthma control test, severity score of hospitalization and measurements of vitD blood levels. Associations between variables were analyzed using the t-test and chi-squared test. The risk for hypovitaminosis D and deficiency was calculated through logistic regression. The data was fed into the Stata 14 software. Results: a total of 117 patients, 9 ± 2.7 years old, were admitted, 64 % were male and 51 % presented with malnutrition by excess. Six out of ten children presented moderate asthma and 55 % had a poor control of their pathology; 73.5 % presented hypovitaminosis D (insufficiency and deficiency), hospitalized patients had 2.8 times more risk of presenting vitD deficiency, adjusted according to seasonality and age (95 %CI, 1.07-7.5, p < 0.05) without being associated with a higher severity score of hospitalization. Conclusion: most of the asthmatic children in the sample presented with hypovitaminosis D, with a higher percentage of deficiency in hospitalized patients, which is not associated with greater severity of hospitalization.