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. <br>

为应对低收入地区的严重公共卫生问题——维生素A（vitamin A）缺乏症，维生素A补充与强化项目已作为极具成本效益的健康干预手段之一得以推行。然而，最新调查数据显示，若未针对其他项目的影响调整强化剂量，多种食品载体的维生素A强化方案可能导致超过20%的幼儿每日摄入量超出安全摄入上限。鉴于当前维生素A摄入过量及其相关风险的评估仍存在诸多难点，这项多学科、跨国研究项目旨在评估多次接触维生素A干预项目是否与摄入量超出安全摄入上限、肝脏储备过量及/或维生素A毒性生物标志物（biomarkers）相关。本项目采集的数据将用于验证炎症人群中的维生素A示踪稀释技术，评估不同维生素A营养状况下维生素A干预措施的有效性与安全性，并助力膳食评估方法的建立。此外，这批采集的数据还将用于评估新型高灵敏度维生素A毒性生物标志物，以期开发适用于人群的无创血清毒性检测标志物。本项目的数据采集自孟加拉国、危地马拉和菲律宾的1至5岁儿童，这些儿童均因多次参与维生素A干预项目而被纳入研究。该数据集包含膳食与生化数据，用以描述所有受试者的营养状况，以及社会经济与人口学特征。此外，本研究还利用猪模型评估了维生素A过多症（hypervitaminosis A）的传统与新型生物标志物。