Vitamin D supplements can help ease extreme eczema in children, a new study has concluded.
The essential vitamin has been in the press a lot recently, with numerous studies finding having optimal blood levels of vitamin D was linked with a lower risk of catching Covid-19 and a reduced risk of suffering badly if you do get it.
And earlier this week it was reported that higher vitamin D levels in pregnancy may lead to greater childhood IQ scores.
Now, a study, published in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, has found the vitamin, used alongside standard treatment for severe atopic dermatitis, or eczema, might provide clinical improvement in children suffering from the skin condition.
“Vitamin D supplementation could be an effective adjuvant treatment that improves the clinical outcomes in severe atopic dermatitis,” the authors wrote. “In conclusion, our study suggests that oral daily Vit D supplement might provide clinical improvement in children with severe AD.”
It is the first study to look into the efficacy of vitamin D in conjunction with standard treatment in patients with severe eczema.
The authors did point out that their research, which involved 86 eczema sufferers who took either oral daily vitamin D or a placebo, in addition to standard care, for 12 weeks, used patients with limited ethnic diversity.
“More investigations are needed to reveal factors associated with superior clinical outcomes in some supplemented patients. We advocate further multicenter studies with a larger sample size of ethnic diverse population to validate the potential benefit of vitamin D on clinical outcomes of severe pediatric eczema,” they said.
“Further studies are also needed to examine whether the positive impact of supplementation would be maintained in pediatrics with winter‐related severe eczema.”
—Reuters
