Waikato Clinical School, Private Bag 3200, Hamilton, 3240, New Zealand.
BMC Psychiatry. 2012 Jun 26;12:68. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-12-68.
Vitamin D deficiency is widespread in New Zealand, confers multiple health risks, and may be particularly common among people with psychiatric illness. We studied vitamin D status in an unselected sample of adult psychiatric inpatients in Hamilton (latitude 37.5 S) during late winter.
We recruited 102 consenting subjects and measured 25-hydroxy vitamin D3 levels in venous blood using a competitive electrochemiluminescence immunoassay. In addition to descriptive statistics, we used one-sample t-tests to determine the extent to which ethnic and diagnostic subgroups fell below the vitamin D deficiency threshold of 50 nM.
75 subjects (74%) had vitamin D levels <50 nM and thus had at least mild deficiency, while 19 (19%) were severely deficient with levels <25 nM. Rates of deficiency were comparable for men and women; only the former showed a correlation of vitamin D levels with age (r = 0.45, p < 0.01). Maori participants constituted half the sample (n = 51) and were more likely to be deficient than their European counterparts (p = 0.04). Vitamin D also varied by diagnosis, with schizophrenia associated with markedly lower levels than mania and depression (p < 0.001).
Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in the psychiatric inpatient setting in New Zealand and may be relevant to poor physical health outcomes, notably among Maori and those with schizophrenia. These findings support proposals to provide vitamin D supplementation, particularly during the winter months.
维生素 D 缺乏在新西兰很普遍，会带来多种健康风险，而且在精神疾病患者中可能更为常见。我们在汉密尔顿（南纬 37.5°）冬季末期对一组未经选择的成年精神科住院患者进行了维生素 D 状态研究。
我们招募了 102 名同意参与的受试者，并使用竞争性电化学发光免疫分析法测量静脉血中的 25-羟维生素 D3 水平。除了描述性统计外，我们还使用单样本 t 检验来确定种族和诊断亚组中低于 50 nM 维生素 D 缺乏阈值的比例。
75 名受试者（74%）的维生素 D 水平<50 nM，因此至少存在轻度缺乏，而 19 名（19%）严重缺乏，水平<25 nM。男女的缺乏率相当；只有前者显示维生素 D 水平与年龄呈正相关（r=0.45，p<0.01）。毛利参与者占样本的一半（n=51），比欧洲裔参与者更容易缺乏（p=0.04）。维生素 D 也因诊断而异，精神分裂症患者的水平明显低于躁狂症和抑郁症患者（p<0.001）。
维生素 D 缺乏在新西兰的精神科住院患者中很普遍，可能与较差的身体健康结果有关，尤其是在毛利人和精神分裂症患者中。这些发现支持了提供维生素 D 补充的建议，特别是在冬季。
