Determination of vitamin A total body stores and toxicity indicators in children exposed to large scale food fortification and inflammation

To combat vitamin A deficiency, a serious public health
problem in low income settings, vitamin A supplementation and fortification
programs have been implemented as some of the most cost-effective health
interventions. However, recent survey
data indicate that fortification of multiple food vehicles could mean that more
than 20% of young children might have vitamin A intakes above the safe upper
level of intake, if fortification levels are not adjusted to account for the
impact of other programs.

Since the assessment of excessive intake of vitamin A and
associated risk remains problematic, this multi-disciplinary and multi-national
research program assessed whether multiple exposure to vitamin A programs is
associated with intake levels above the safe upper level of intake, excess
hepatic stores and/or biomarkers of vitamin A toxicity.

The collected data of this project will aid in the validation
of the vitamin A tracer dilution technique in individuals with inflammation, to
evaluate the effectiveness and safety of vitamin A interventions across the
full spectrum of vitamin A status, and the establishment of dietary assessment
methods. Furthermore, the collected data
will help evaluate new and sensitive biomarkers of vitamin A toxicity to
develop potential non-invasive serum markers of toxicity in human
populations. The collected data was
collected from 1-5 year old children from Bangladesh, Guatemala and the
Philippines who were selected based on multiple exposure to vitamin A
intervention programs. The data consists
of dietary and biochemical data describing the nutritional status as well as
socioeconomic and demographic status of all participants. Furthermore, a pig model was used to evaluate
traditional and novel biomarkers of hypervitaminosis A.