Vitamin D status of refugees arriving in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective To determine the 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) serum levels in refugee women of childbearing age and in refugee children; to compare their 25(OH)D levels with the recommended levels in order to determine the prevalence of deficiency; to compare their 25(OH)D levels with those in the general Canadian population in the appropriate age and sex groups; and to investigate the association of vitamin D deficiency with potential risk factors. Design Cross-sectional chart review. Setting The Calgary Refugee Health Program, an urban family practice that serves newly arrived refugees in Calgary, Alta. Participants A total of 1217 refugee women and children screened between June 2005 and January 2010. Main outcome measures Serum 25(OH)D values that were measured during initial screening visits. Results Overall, 1217 of the 1768 eligible participants (69%) had 25(OH)D laboratory values recorded. The mean concentration of 25(OH)D was 52.0 nmol/L (95% CI 50.6 to 53.3 nmol/L). Using the Institute of Medicine guideline for adequate serum vitamin D levels (> 50 nmol/L), 61% of women and 42% of children had lower-than-desirable 25(OH)D levels. Considering the Osteoporosis Canada guidelines, 88% of women and 81% of children had lower-than-desirable 25(OH)D levels (< 75 nmol/L), and 21% of women and 10% of children were vitamin D deficient (< 25 nmol/L). Mean levels of 25(OH)D were significantly lower across all age and sex groupings compared with the general Canadian population ( P < .001). Women from the Middle East had lower mean 25(OH)D values (24.6 nmol/L, 95% CI 21.7 to 27.5 nmol/L) compared with women from Asia, Africa, or South America ( P < .001). Mean values of 25(OH)D were lower during the winter in children ( P = .01) but not in women. Female refugees between the ages of 12 and 19 years old had lower mean values of 25(OH)D than male refugees in the same age group did ( P = .01). Conclusion Most refugees had lower-than-desirable vitamin D levels. All age groups studied had lower mean 25(OH)D levels compared with the general Canadian population. Health care providers should be aware of this concern and consider vitamin D supplementation among refugees.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".