Assessment of Vitamin B12 Deficiency and Associated Factors in Patients Attending Tertiary Care Hospital of Southern Rajasthan
Journal Title: National Journal of Community Medicine - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 10
Abstract
Introduction: Vitamin B12 deficien-cy is gaining increasing importance as a public health issue as subclini-cal deficiency is reported to exist in India in more than 30% of adults and children. Thus the present study was done to find the burden of vitamin B12 deficiency in the symptomatic patients in the tertiary care centre and to analyze its asso-ciation with demographic profile, dietary habits and severity of pre-senting symptoms. Method: A 3 months long cross-sectional study was done in 235 symptomatic patients who were bi-ochemically tested for serum Vita-min B12 levels. Results: Almost 25.1% patients with symptoms were found deficient in Vitamin B12 at the study centre. De-ficiency is higher in males i.e. 29.6%. Higher deficiency levels were found in urban population i.e. 30.6% and vegetarians (27.7%). Maximum deficiency was seen in females when they presented with late neurological deficit like demen-tia or seizures (42.8%). Conclusion: Approximately 1/4th of the symptomatic population was found Vitamin B12 deficient sug-gesting the clinical deficiency show-ing the tip of the iceberg. Study find-ings suggest public health issue, thus further community based stud-ies are required to evaluate it in In-dia with large sample size and compelling IEC activities regarding dietary habits and early reporting of the symptoms and prompt treat-ment.
Authors and Affiliations
Poornima Sharma, Keerti Singh, Rekha Bhatnagar, Rohit Jain
Keywords
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