Research Paper|Volume 5, Issue 7|pp 575—581

Vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for obesity and diabetes type 2 in women at late reproductive age

Grineva EN¹, Karonova T^1,², Micheeva E², Belyaeva O², Belyaeva IL¹

¹Almazov's Centre of Heart, Blood and Endocrinology, Petersburg, 197134, Russia
²I. P. Pavlov St Petersburg State Medical University, St. Petersburg, 197022, Russia

Received: October 22, 2012Accepted: July 18, 2013Published: July 22, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Grineva et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

It was suggested that glucose metabolism and body fat content depend on serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]. We studied 320 healthy women at late reproductive age of 40 to 52 years old (mean age 46.1±4.5) from St. Petersburg (North-West region of Russia). 25(OH)D levels were from 19.4 to 134.0 nMol/L (mean 52.9±22.7). Vitamin D deficiency (lower than 50 nMol/L) and insufficiency (50-75 nMol/L) was revealed in 59.1% and 27.8% of women, respectively. The study showed that low 25(OH)D levels were associated with obesity (r=-0.35, p<0.01), increased plasma glucose levels after OGTT (r=-0.31, p<0.01) and decreased insulin sensitivity index (r=-0.28, p<0.01). We found that 25(OH)D levels below 50 nMol/L were associated with obesity risk (OR 2.25[1.05-3.95], CI 95%) but not with risk of impaired glucose metabolism (1.07[0.54-2.12],CI95%). Our results showed that vitamin D insufficiency is highly prevalent in the population of healthy women. Low 25(OH)D levels correlated with high body fat, glucose levels and decreased insulin sensitivity. We conclude that vitamin D deficiency is a potential risk factor for obesity and development of insulin resistance leading to diabetes type 2.