ICCBH2019 Poster Presentations (1) (226 abstracts)
Children's multivitamins do not contain sufficient vitamin D
Rebecca Moon 1 , Elizabeth Curtis 1 , Cyrus Cooper 1 , Justin Davies 2 & Nicholas Harvey 1
1MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK; 2Paediatric Endocrinology, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK.
Objective: Public Health England recommends that children in the United Kingdom (UK) aged over 1 year should take a vitamin D supplement containing 400 IU/day. Commercially available children’s multivitamin and vitamin D supplements were surveyed to determine the vitamin D content.
Methods: Multivitamins and vitamin D supplements marketed at children <12 years and sold by nine UK supermarkets and health supplement retailers were surveyed. The vitamin D content was determined from manufacturer’s websites and product packaging.
Results: 67 multivitamins were surveyed, containing 0–800 IU/day vitamin D. Only 25–36%, depending on the child’s age, provided ≥400 IU/day vitamin D. A further 24 products were available that contained only vitamin D or were marketed as for ‘healthy bones’. The vitamin D content of these products was typically higher than for multivitamins (57–67% contained ≥400 IU/day), although ranged from 50–1000 IU/day.
Conclusions: Few multivitamin products that are available in UK supermarkets and high street health food shops supply the recommended 400 IU/day vitamin D. Clinicians need to be aware of this when recommending vitamin D supplementation and advise parents/carers to choose a product that contains ≥400 IU/day vitamin D.
Disclosure: The authors declared no competing interests.
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