Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency is a highly prevalent medical condition associated with various clinical and biochemical outcomes although these outcomes might be absent in a significant percentage of patients. Altered serum calcium, phosphorus, parathyroid hormone and alkaline phosphatase activity are expected but not proven by many research. The current study aims to investigate the possibility of these biomarkers to be used as indicators of vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. The study enrolled 150 randomly selected participants who have no acute or chronic medical condition with various levels of serum vitamin D ranging from normal to severely deficient. They were investigated for serum total calcium, phosphorus, parathyroid hormone and alkaline phosphatase activity. The results were statistically compared among the studied groups and correlated with serum vitamin D levels. There was no significant difference in mean serum calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase activity among the groups with poor correlation with vitamin D. Mean serum parathyroid hormone has shown a significant difference among the studied groups with a strong negative correlation with vitamin D. This difference was apparent even in patients with vitamin D insufficiency. Serum calcium, PO4 and ALP activity seem to have a poor correlation with vitamin D concentration. In addition, serum PTH might be considered a sensitive marker of both vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency.

Key words: Parathyroid hormone; hypocalcemia, vitamin D; alkaline phosphatase; phosphorus