الفهرس 
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Abstract
Summary
Vitamin D deficiency has been related to a higher incidence of bronchial asthma in children, and also to the severity of the condition, the greater the deficiency, the worse the condition (Brehm et a.l, 2009). They found that 28% of the asthmatic children had serum vitamin D levels less than 30 ng/ml, which is clearly a deficiency state. Normal Vitamin D levels were found to be associated with better lung functions and less airway hyper-responsiveness (Sutherland et al., 2010).
In our present study our aim was to study the relation between serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D level and both atopic and non-atopic childhood asthma.
The study was conducted on 200 children, aged 5-12 years. Half of them were suffering from bronchial asthma; 60 with atopic and 40 with non-atopic asthma. The remaining 100 were healthy, age and sex matched children taken as a control group.
All the children included in this study were subjected to complete medical history taking, clinical examination and laboratory investigations including detection of serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels.
We obtained the following results:
Family history of atopy was significantly higher in children with atopic bronchial asthma.
The commonest presenting symptom in our atopic and non-atopic asthmatic children was cough (100%) followed by wheezing (73%), then difficult breathing (41%).
Atopic and non-atopic asthmatic children showed nearly similar severity and duration.
Both the eosinophilic count and serum IgE level were significantly elevated in the group of atopic asthma.
Both intake of vitamin D rich foods and exposure to sun were significantly less frequent in the asthmatic patients than in the control group.
Serum 25-Hydroxy vitamin D level was lowest in the non-atopic cases (50.36 nmol/l), higher in the atopic group (76.36 nm/l) and highest in the healthy controls (100.63 nmol/l).
There was a statistically significant relation between asthma severity and serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D level. The lower the level of vitamin D the severer was the disease.
There was a statistically significant positive correlation between serum IgE and vitamin D levels in the asthmatic children.
Conclusions
Asthmatic children usually spend more time indoors with subsequent infrequent exposure to sun. Also, they infrequently eat foods rich in vitamin D. So, they suffer from vitamin D deficiency.
The lower the level of vitamin D the severer was the disease.
There was a statistically significant positive correlation between serum IgE and vitamin D levels in the asthmatic children.