الفهرس 
Physiology and Production of Vitamin DOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common medical conditions in recent times. Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is pandemic and is seen in essentially every country in the world. It has been estimated that more than one billion people worldwide are either vitamin D deficient or insufficient.
There are many factors associated with vitamin D deficiency such as insufficient UVB exposure, urbanization, pollution and traditional clothing preventing UVB reaching skin surface. Thus there needs to be increased awareness on the part of the medical community and public about the insidious consequences of vitamin D deficiency.
Recently, a great number of literatures dealing with vitamin D relationships with autoimmune diseases have been published. Particularly, its role in the pathogenesis, disease activity, and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythromatous, osteoarthritis has been raised, based on the observations and results of clinical and laboratory studies.
The objective of the present study was to evaluate Vitamin D sufficiency status in patients of various rheumatological diseases in a tertiary referral rheumatology clinic. For this purpose, our study included 80 patients who were classified according to different disease groups into 20 Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis, 20 Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematous, 20 Patients with Osteoarthritis and 20 Patients with Miscellaneous Rheumatological Diseases.
The results of the present study revealed statistically significant differences between serum 25(OH) vitamin D sufficiency groups as regard smoking, corticosteroid therapy and rheumatological diseases. Serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels decreased in smoker patients compared to nonsmoker patients (All the 9 smoker patients were in the deficient category), serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels decreased in patients who received corticosteroid therapy (from the 30 patients who received corticosteroid therapy, 25 patients were in the deficient group and 5 patients were in the insufficient group), at P value < 0.05.
In our study, as regard the relation between serum 25(OH) vitamin D and different rheumatological diseases, Serum 25(OH) vitamin D recorded the lowest level in the Rheumatoid Arthritis patients followed by Systemic Lupus Erythematous, Osteoarthritis and Miscellaneous diseases respectively, (P value < 0.05).
In the current study, there were highly significant differences between serum 25(OH) vitamin D sufficiency groups as regard age. Serum 25(OH) vitamin D level decreased with age increase, moreover, upon applying TUKEY’s test there were highly significant differences between various age groups and the degrees of serum 25(OH) vitamin D deficiency (P value < 0.001).
In our results, there were highly significant differences between serum 25(OH) vitamin D sufficiency groups as regard serum calcium level, serum Phosphorus level, ESR and Uric Acid level.
Also, there were highly significant differences between serum 25(OH) vitamin D sufficiency groups as regard disease duration . Serum 25(OH) vitamin D level decreased with disease duration, moreover, upon applying TUKEY’s test the more disease duration was the less serum 25(OH) vitamin D level regardless to the type of rheumatological disease (P value < 0.001).
In our results, serum 25(OH) vitamin D level decreased with serum calcium as well as serum phosphorus decrease. Serum 25(OH) vitamin D decreased with both ESR and Uric Acid increase (P value < 0.001).
There were highly significant differences between serum 25(OH) vitamin D sufficiency groups as regard CRP and Rheumatoid Factor level. Moreover, serum 25(OH) vitamin D level decreased with both CRP and Rheumatoid Factor increase (P value < 0.001).