Publication date: 2014
What is already known about this subject:
- Vitamin D is essential for growing and maintaining strong, healthy bones, and can also help to protect against cardiovascular disease and cancer. Maintaining adequate vitamin D levels is particularly important during adolescence when the bones are rapidly growing.
- Vitamin D is absorbed from the sun, and factors that influence sun exposure (such as time spent outdoors) also affect vitamin D levels.
- The factors that contribute to vitamin D deficiency in Australian adults have recently been described, but similar data is not yet available in adolescents.
What this study adds
- Vitamin D data from blood samples collected from Raine participants at 14 and 17 years of age found higher vitamin D levels in Caucasian participants who exercised more and who had a lower body mass index, a greater calcium intake and a higher family income.
- The highest vitamin D levels were found in blood samples collected at the end of summer.
- Very few adolescents were classified as vitamin D deficient, though a substantial proportion had potentially insufficient levels, particularly during winter.
- There is still debate about what levels of vitamin D should be considered adequate, so it is still not clear if strategies are needed to increase vitamin D levels in Western Australian adolescents.