Vitamin D Deficiency Widespread During Pregnancy: "Even regular use of prenatal multivitamin supplements is not adequate to prevent vitamin D insufficiency, University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Nutrition, the publication of the American Society for Nutrition. A condition linked to rickets and other musculoskeletal and health complications, vitamin D insufficiency was found to be widespread among women during pregnancy, particularly in the northern latitudes.

'In our study, more than 80 percent of African-American women and nearly half of white women tested at delivery had levels of vitamin D that were too low, even though more than 90 percent of them used prenatal vitamins during pregnancy,' said Lisa Bodnar, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) and lead author of the study. 'The numbers also were striking for their newborns -- 92.4 percent of African-American babies and 66.1 percent of white infants were found to have insufficient vitamin D at birth.'

A vitamin closely associated with bone health, vitamin D deficiency early in life is associated with rickets -- a disorder characterized by soft bones and thought to have been eradicated in the United States more than 50 years ago -- as well as increased risk for type 1 diabetes, asthma and s"