Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

What It Covers

Researchers studied Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in this meta-analysis publication.

The researchers aimed to estimate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in children and adults living in Africa.

Wellcome Trust and the DELTAS Africa Initiative.

Who the Included Studies Covered

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, young children, children, teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

The researchers included all studies with measured serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) concentrations from healthy participants residing in Africa.

The researchers used a standardised data extraction form to collect information from eligible studies; if the required information was not available in the published report, the researchers requested raw data from the authors.

How the Review Was Done

For this systematic review and meta-analysis, the researchers searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, African Journals Online, and African Index Medicus for studies on vitamin D prevalence, published from database inception to Aug 6, 2019, without language restrictions.

The researchers excluded case reports and case series, studies that measured 25(OH)D only after a clinical intervention, and studies with only a meeting abstract or unpublished material available.

The researchers did a random-effects meta-analysis to obtain the pooled prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in African populations, with use of established cutoffs and mean 25(OH)D concentrations.

The researchers stratified meta-analyses by participant age group, geographical region, and residence in rural or urban areas.

The study is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42018112030.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Africa, Dietary Supplements, Prevalence and Vitamin D Deficiency.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 7 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2020 (The Lancet. Global health), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.