Study of Serum Vitamin D Levels in Children with Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura

Background: Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is described by an immune responding versus the host’s own platelets, in recent years is progressively studied the non-calcemic roles of vitamin-D (VD) that controls immune and inflammation responding.

Aim and objectives: The current work aimed to study VD-level in children with ITP and influence of VD supplementing upon the responding of the thrombopenia to conventional therapy of ITP. Subjects and methods: This study is a cross-sectional observational work which included 30 ITP-children who were attendants to Hematology and Oncology Unit, Pediatric Department, Tanta University Hospitals with ages from 2 to 16-yrs with mean ageing of 6.43 ± 3.75-yrs, for all patients and controls serum-levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) were measured.

Results: A significant change was found among the studied groups in regard to VD-levels with lower values among patients compared with controls, a statistically significant negative association was found among platelet counts and each of vitamin D level and serum Ca, the mean platelet count after conventional therapy was significantly increased in group one ITP patients. Conclusion: VD lack is very frequent in children with recently identified or chronic ITP form. Consequently, there are advantages of supplement VD in ITP-cases.