Immigrants with darker skin often need vitamin D (clinical practice guidelines) – Oct 2024

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Assessment of the quality and content of clinical practice guidelines for vitamin D and for immigrants using the AGREE II instrument: global systematic review - Oct 2024

BMJ Open. 2024 Oct 10;14(10):e080233. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-080233.
Said Yousef 1 2, Lamia Hayawi 3, Alomgir Hossain 4 5, Nazmun Nahar 5, Doug Manuel 6, Ian Colman 7, Emmanuel Papadimitropoulos 8 9, MoezAlIslam E Faris 10, Leenah Abdelrazeq 11, George A Wells 7 12

Background: Worldwide, more immigrants experience vitamin D (vitD) deficiency than non-immigrants. Recommendations in current clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) concerning vitD are inadequate to address vitD deficiency among immigrants, and there are concerns regarding the quality of guidance in these CPGs.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify and evaluate the quality of published CPGs addressing vitD and immigrants' health using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation-II (AGREE II) tool and clarify the recommendations pertaining to vitD and immigrant populations in these CPGs.

Methods: We performed a systematic search to identify the most recent CPGs across various databases (Ovid MEDLINE ALL, Embase and Turning Research Into Practice), guideline repositories and grey literature. Two reviewers independently conducted study selection and data abstraction and evaluated the quality of the included guidelines using the AGREE II tool.

Results: We identified 25 relevant CPGs; 21 focused on vitD and 4 covered immigrants' health. Around one-quarter of the included CPGs were high quality (≥60% in at least four of the six domains, including 'rigour of development'). The highest mean scores among the six AGREE II domains were for 'clarity of presentation' and 'scope and purpose'. About 4.8% (1/21) of the CPGs on vitD had immigrant-related recommendations. VitD recommendations were emphasised in one out of the four immigrant health CPGs (25%). CPGs covering immigrants' health and vitD were inadequately systematically appraised. Moreover, recommendations regarding vitD were insufficient to address the growing epidemic of vitD deficiency among immigrant populations.

Conclusion: The insufficient recommendations for vitD fail to address the rising vitD deficiency among immigrants, highlighting a critical gap in healthcare provisions. Urgent national and international efforts are needed to develop comprehensive CPGs, bridging research, policy and practice disparities. Future guidelines must prioritise routine vitD screening, supplementation protocols for vulnerable immigrant groups, and culturally appropriate interventions to improve health outcomes for immigrants globally.
 Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

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14+ VitaminDWiki pages have IMMIGRANT in the title

The list is automatically updated

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VitaminDWiki – Overview Dark Skin and Vitamin D contains

FACT - - People with dark skins have more health problems and higher mortality rate than those with light skins
FACT - - People with dark skins have low levels of vitamin D
FACT - - People with light skins who have low vitamin D have health problems
OBSERVATION - - The health problems of whites with low level of vitamin D are similar to those with dark skins
CONCLUSION - - People with dark skins have more health problems due to low levels of vitamin D
African American Health Disparities are associated with low Vitamin D - Grant Feb 2021
Low Vitamin D increases health problems - independent of skin color

Dark Skin studies: Pregnancy (29 studies),  Genetics (13 studies),  Vitamin D Binding Protein (8 studies),  Vitamin D Receptor (7 studies),  Diabetes (24 studies),   Cardiovascular (18 studies),  Mortality (12 studies), Intervention (16 studies) Click here to see the studies

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VitaminDWiki – Blacks die more often than whites of many diseases (they have less vitamin D) – 2012 contains the following summary__

Cancer Facts & Figures for African Americans Cancer.org

• “African Americans have the highest death rate and shortest survival of any racial and ethnic group in the US for most cancers”
• Has a huge number of tables and charts, Note: Vitamin D is not mentioned

Leading Causes of Death as of March 2018

All Ages Death rate	Black	White	Ratio
Heart diseases	217	171	1.27
Cancer	199	170	1.17
Cerebrovascular diseases	51	36	1.4
Diabetes	40	19	2.0

Rates per 100,000    Age adjusted   Non-Hispanic

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6 of 22,100 hits for immigrant "vitamin d" in Google Scholar - Oct 2024

Google Scholar

• Prevalence and determinants of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency among three immigrant groups in Finland: evidence from a population-based study using standardised 25-hydroxyvitamin D data - March 2020 FREE PDF
• Vitamin D concentrations were often insufficient among native Norwegian adolescents and children with a non-Western immigrant background - Dec 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.17078
• Vitamin D levels of pregnant immigrant women and developmental disorders of language, learning and coordination in offspring Feb 2024  FREE PDF
• Vitamin D and Chronic Diseases among First-Generation Immigrants: A Large-Scale Study Using Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) Data - April 2022 FREE PDF
• A major health problem facing immigrant children: nutritional rickets - Oct, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1515/jpem-2021-0420
• Low vitamin D in dark-skinned immigrants is mainly due to clothing habits and low UVR exposure: a Danish observational study - Oct. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43630-021-00115-w