Vitamin D Deficiency Is Correlated with Severity of Allergic Rhinitis

摘要

Background: Vitamin D deficiency has been targeted as a cause of the increased incidence of allergic rhinitis. Many factors, including sun exposure, influence vitamin D levels. Indonesia is a country with abundant sunshine exposure throughout the year; therefore, Indonesian residents are not expected to have inadequate vitamin D levels. Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether vitamin D deficiency levels are correlated with disease spectrum among allergic rhinitis patients. Material and Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Rhino-Allergy ORL-HNS Clinic at Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital in Bandung, Indonesia, from March-June 2016. All subjects underwent skin prick tests and serum 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels examination. To measure the association between vitamin D deficiency lev el and severity of allergic rhinitis, a Rank-Spearman correlation test was used and significance level was determined when the p-value is <0.05. Results: A total of 46 allergic rhinitis patients (19 males, 27 females, aged 28.3 ± 6 years) were included in this study. 63% of allergic rhinitis patients had a severe vitamin D deficiency and 50% of them classified as having persistent moderate-severe based on ARIA-WHO classification. Vitamin D deficiency was found to be significantly correlated with severity of allergic rhinitis status (r s) = -0.321; p = 0.005). Conclusion: We found vitamin D deficiency was correlated with allergic rhinitis classification and a significant proportion of allergic rhinitis patients showed a severe vitamin D deficiency.