Rai Muhammad Asghar, Tariq Saeed Sheikh, Sadia Riaz.
Vitamin A status of children below five years age.
J Pak Inst Med Sci Jan ;14(2):794-7.

In this prospective study, vitamin A status of children aged 6 months to five years was evaluated at Department of Pediatrics, Rawalpindi General Hospital, Rawalpindi Medical College, Rawalpindi from April 1998 to September 1998. Vitamin A level estimation was performed in 130 patients including 30 well nourished and 100 malnourished children. All those children who had received 100,000 units or more of vitamin A either as single dose or in the form of multiple doses in previous 3 months, having diarrhea or respiratory tract infection in previous 2 weeks and history of measles in past 3 months were excluded. Subnormal levels of vitamin A were, found in 41 (31.53 %) children; 17 (13.07%) of them were deficient and 24 (18.46%) had low levels of vitamin A. Amongst well-nourished children, 5 (16.66%) were having sub normal levels of vitamin A. Out of them 4(13.33%) were deficient and 1 (3.33%) had low level of vitamin A. Among malnourished children 36 (36%) children were having subnormal level and out of them 13 % children were deficient in vitamin A level and rest were having low levels. There was no significant sex distribution for subnormal levels of vitamin A in our study group. On the other hand similar frequency of vitamin A deficiency was found in well-nourished (13.33%) and malnourished (13%) children. It was concluded that Vitamin A deficiency is present in both well-nourished and malnourished children.

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