Authors
Thet Su Su Aung, Myat Myat Khine
Published in
Scientific reports. Jul 04, 2026. Epub Jul 04, 2026.
Abstract
Acute bronchiolitis is the most common lower respiratory tract infection during the first year of life. Vitamin D is an important contributing factor to the increasing incidence and severity of bronchiolitis over the past three decades. Numerous international studies have suggested that low vitamin D levels are associated with the severity of bronchiolitis. This study aimed to determine serum vitamin D levels in infants hospitalized with acute bronchiolitis in Myanmar. A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in medical units of Yankin Children's Hospital from August 2022 to July 2023. A total of seventy-five children aged one to twelve months old were included and the Wang clinical severity score was assessed for severity categorization. A total of 75 children, 86% of the study population, were in the one-to-six-month- old age group and only ten children, 13.3%, were in the six-month to one -year-old age group. According to the Wang clinical severity score, severe bronchiolitis was found in 64% of the study population, and non-severe bronchiolitis was detected in 36%. In this study, the mean vitamin D level in the studied population was 44.29 ± 19.55 nmol/L in non-severe bronchiolitis patients and 35.31 ± 15.83 nmol/ L in severe bronchiolitis patients. In the present study, it is found out that 16 children with severe bronchiolitis cases were vitamin D deficient, and only one child with non- severe bronchiolitis cases were vitamin D deficient. Among the 54 vitamin D insufficient children, 59.3% were severe bronchiolitis, 40.7% were non-severe bronchiolitis cases. Among the 48 cases of severe bronchiolitis, none of them had sufficient vitamin D level. A non-parametric Spearman's rank correlation analysis demonstrated a statistically significant, moderate inverse correlation between serum vitamin D levels and the Wang clinical severity score level ([Formula: see text] = -0.41; P < 0.001), establishing that lower vitamin D concentrations strongly correlate with greater clinical severity. It was noted that each one-point increase in the Wang clinical severity score was independently associated with a decrease of 2.95 nmol/L in serum vitamin D concentration (B = -2.95; 95% CI: -4.97 to -0.93; P = 0.005). Neither age (B = -0.21 per month; 95% CI: -1.96 to 1.54; P = 0.814) nor gender (female versus male, B = 2.84; 95% CI: -5.87 to 11.55; P = 0.518) achieved statistical significance in the analysis of the study. In this study, lower serum vitamin D levels were associated with a higher Wang severity score, but the clinical significance is limited by small sample size, lack of confounder control, and absence of seasonality data. Causal inference cannot be made.
PMID:
42401655
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 05 Jul 2026.
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