Relation of Vitamin D level with otitis media in autistic children | ||||
| Egyptian Pharmaceutical Journal | ||||
| Article 9, Volume 24, Issue 3, July 2025, Page 92-97 PDF (413.48 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/epj.2025.351050.1008 | ||||
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| Authors | ||||
Heba Tallah sherif Abd El Hady   1; Fatma Hussein1; Maha Hemimi 1; Walaa Samy Nazim2; Ghada Tarek Orabi1
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| 1children with special needs department, National Research Centre. | ||||
| 2Department of human genetics and genome research institute, National Research center, Cairo. | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a disorder with a complex clinical presentation and an unknown etiopathogenesis. Immune dysfunction is suggested as a risk factor contributing to co-morbidities observed with ASD. Vitamin D plays a vital immunomodulatory role in bacterial and viral infections besides its newly emerging role in postnatal brain development. Objective This study aims to assess relation between vitamin D and otitis media (OM) in autistic children. OM can present additional challenges to autistic individuals. Materials and methods There were 91 participants in the study. They were split into three groups ranging in age from 2 to 12 years. The first group comprised 35 autistic children without OM, the second group comprised 35 autistic children with OM, and the third comprised 21 healthy controls. All 3 groups underwent otoscopy and tympanometry to assess middle ear functions and to investigate the presence of OM, measurement of the vitamin D concentration, CARS-2 for assessment of autism severity, and language assessment to determine their linguistic abilities. Results and conclusion Compared to healthy controls, children with ASD had considerably lower serum vitamin D levels. Additionally, children with ASD and OM had notably lower serum Vit D levels than children without ASD. On the other hand, neither the existence of OM nor serum vitamin D levels were correlated with linguistic ability or age. Serum Vit D level may contribute to the immune modulation in autistic children and lower levels of Vit D might increase the chance of middle ear infections, but it was not correlated with autism severity or language age or verbal communication. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Key words: Ear infection; otitis media; immune function; pediatric otolaryngology; hearing health; immunomodulation; inflammation | ||||
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