Grant: Project Grant

Approximately 10000 children are admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in Canada each year. These critically ill children receive costly interventions and prolonged period of rehabilitation with the goal of preventing death and reducing long-term impairments. Vitamin D supplementation has recently been proposed as a simple and inexpensive means to lessen illness severity, speed recovery, decrease chronic illness, and reduce health care spending. Why? First, vitamin D is important for the health and stress response of multiple organs including the heart, lungs, and immune system. Second, studies have shown that many critically ill children have low vitamin D levels (70% in Canadian PICUs). Given these observations, clinicians providing care to critically ill children are being to ask: how should I manage vitamin D deficiency in the ICU?Unfortunately, the high dose vitamin D supplementation strategies approved by the government of Canada (age dependent: 1000-4000 IU/day) can take months to normalize vitamin D levels. Consequently, a new approach that rapidly restores vitamin D status using loading dose therapy will be required. To date, there have been no pediatric studies evaluating vitamin D loading therapy in critical illness. The proposed project will address this knowledge gap by determining whether an innovative protocol based on loading therapy can safely and rapidly normalize vitamin D levels.