Vitamin D is an essential vitamin known as the sunlight vitamin; it is synthesized in the skin when exposed to the sun’s radiation. Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes among others. We aimed to evaluate a large bulk dose of vitamin D (600000 IU) to a child and its mother (720000 IU) compared with a lower bulk dose (180000 IU) to both for improving serum 25(OH)D level. This study was a randomized controlled trial. Healthy volunteers i.e. 31 mothers and 30 children were given the above doses at 0-day, and at every 2 months upto 6 months i.e. 4 doses. Face to face interviews of parents of all the children were based on a questionnaire that included variables such as socio demographic information, vitamin D intake and laboratory investigations. Analysis was performed using Stata (Version 11.2). A value of p< 0.05 was considered significant. At the baseline and at 6 months 25- Hydroxyvitamin D, Calcium and Alkaline Phosphatase were measured. The baseline results showed 59% children deficient, 34% insufficient and 7% sufficient. For mothers, 72% were deficient and others insufficient. Mean maternal 25(OH)D concentration was low in both the vitamin D low dose and high dose groups at baseline (15.37 vs 10.32 ng/ml). This is highly significant. We found that both lower bulk dose and higher bulk-dose vitamin D of maternal supplementation provides increased 25(OH)D i.e. more than 20ng/ml over a 187-day period; for children both lower and higher doses were more effective than the mothers.
