Examining the Vitamin D Status of Children With Solid Tumors

Objective: Our aims were to compare the vitamin D status of children with and without cancer and to examine the possible correlation between vitamin D levels in children with cancer before initiating treatment and prognosis. Method: We compared the data of 173 children with cancer with those of 569 children without cancer. Results: We measured a significant difference (p = 1.34E-08) between the vitamin D levels of children with cancer before treatment and children without cancer. There was a significant correlation between the initial vitamin D levels of children with cancer and the prognosis (p = 0.016, odds ratio = 51.33) at 5% significance. Conclusions: The average vitamin D level was 19.76% lower in the population with cancer compared with the average of the control group, and we found a correlation between the lower vitamin D levels in children with cancer and the adverse prognosis. We suggest that supplying vitamin D is reasonable and a prospective study of vitamin D in pediatric patients with cancer is recommended.