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  • Association between maternal vitamin D deficiency and small for gestational age: evidence from a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

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Public health
Research
Association between maternal vitamin D deficiency and small for gestational age: evidence from a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies
  1. Yao Chen1,
  2. Beibei Zhu1,2,
  3. Xiaoyan Wu1,2,
  4. Si Li3,
  5. Fangbiao Tao1,2
  1. 1 Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China
  2. 2 Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Population Health and Aristogenics, Hefei, Anhui, China
  3. 3 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Fangbiao Tao; taofangbiao{at}126.com

Abstract

Objective To determine whether maternal vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy is associated with small for gestational age (SGA).

Methods A comprehensive literature search of PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and the Elsevier ScienceDirect library was conducted to identify relevant articles reporting prospective cohort studies in English, with the last report included published in February 2017. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to evaluate the correlation in a random effects model.

Results A total of 13 cohort studies were included in this meta-analysis with a sample of 28 285 individuals from seven countries. The pooled overall OR for babies born SGA was 1.588 (95% CI 1.138 to 2.216; p<0.01) for women with vitamin D deficiency. The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy varied from 13.2% to 77.3%. Subgroup analyses identified no significant differences in the association between vitamin D deficiency and SGA based on study quality, gestational week during which blood sampling was performed, cut-off vitamin D levels, sample size, adjustment for critical confounders and method for measuring vitamin D.

Conclusion This meta-analysis suggests that vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of SGA.

  • vitamin D
  • small for gestational age
  • cohort study
  • meta-analysis

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016404

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors FT contributed to study design; SL, XW and BZ contributed analysis tools and methods; YC analysed the data and drafted the manuscript; BZ and FT revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors are grateful for the financial support offered by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81330068, 81573168).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.