Vitamin D insufficiency no recommended dietary allowance exists …

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by the study protocol), then vitamin D insufficiency would not …. Meunier P. Vitamin D insufficiency: reappraisal of its definition threshold and …

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Commentary
Commentaire
Rickets, a defect in bone growth during infancy and
childhood, was first characterized in 1650. Although
cod-liver oil was used as a folk remedy in
northern Europe starting in the late 1700s, it was not until
1922 that the medical community realized that something
in it prevented and cured rickets.1,2 As recently as 4 decades
ago, physicians assumed that vitamin D nutrition was adequate
if people exhibited no clinical or radiographic signs
of rickets.3,4 Osteomalacia, the adult counterpart of rickets,
was rarely seen, and it was assumed that adults require no
more, and usually less, vitamin D than infants do.4 It was
also assumed that the vitamin D generated in the skin, vitamin
D3, was functionally equivalent to a different molecule,
vitamin D2, generated from lipids in yeast.3,4
Physicians have been able to quantify vitamin D nutritional
status in their patients since the 1970s, by measuring
the serum concentration of 25(OH)D. A low concentration
of 25(OH)D causes a form of secondary hyperparathyroidism,
which is thought to accelerate bone loss.5 Unfortunately,
the practical advice about how to deal with vitamin
D nutrition in adults…