The Great Vitamin D Panic

From John Cannell, MD
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/

Two years after Great Britain halved its Vitamin D dose for infants, due to the Great Vitamin D Panic, the incidence of infantile hypercalcemia was unchanged.

Fifty years ago, Great Britain laid the foundation for every subsequent U.S. Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) Vitamin D recommendation when England had a fit of hysteria, the Great Vitamin D Panic. Professor Bruce Hollis wrote about this scare in some detail in a 2004 paper, and how the British panic affected the American FNB. He also details the role the Williams syndrome played in the Great Vitamin D Panic. Williams syndrome is a genetic malformation that causes, among other things, infantile hypersensitivity to Vitamin D, elevated 1,25 levels even without supplemental Vitamin D, and often hypercalcemia in response to supplemental Vitamin D. (In fact, it was by studying the Williams Syndrome that I became more convinced of the relationship of Vitamin D to autism. Kids with the Williams syndrome, the only human disease with greatly elevated serum 1,25 levels around birth, grow up to have an adult personality that is the phenotypic opposite of autism, thus they are an experiment of nature.) Anyway, in the midst of the panic, Great Britain reduced infant supplementation by one-half in 1957, expecting to see a reduction in infantile hypercalcemia (7.2 cases per month in the country). It did not. Two years later, in 1959, the incidence of infantile hypercalcemia in Great Britain was essentially unchanged (6.8 cases per month.) However, by 1961, the reported incidence was apparently halved to 3 cases per month. The British Paediatric Association concluded it remains speculative whether the decrease in hypercalcemia by 1961 is a consequence of reduced Vitamin D intake because it was not chronologically related to the reduction of Vitamin D intakes introduced in 1957.

It seems likely that what happened was this. The Great Vitamin D Panic began in the early 1950s and British pediatricians began drawing lots of blood calcium levels on their infant patients, fearful they were toxic. They kept drawing frequent blood calcium levels and thus detecting high baseline blood calcium levels until 1960 when the Great Vitamin D Scare ebbed and they drew fewer and fewer infantile blood calcium levels. Thus fewer high baseline levels were detected and by 1961 fewer British infants diagnosed with high blood calcium. It was simply due to fewer blood tests ordered for calcium; it had nothing to do with Vitamin D.