Evaluation of vitamin D profile in juvenile idiopathic arthritis

Objective To observe the association between serum vitamin D level and disease activity in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Methods The observational study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital during 2017-2019. Patients suffered from JIA were recruited through purposive sampling which was stratified by the disease activity based on the Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score 27 (JADAS27) criteria. Serum vitamin D was estimated alongside other laboratory parameters. The numerical and categorical variables were analysed with appropriate statistical tests. Results 40 subjects were studied where inactive disease was observed in nine subjects (22.5%), five subjects (12.5%) were found to be in low disease activity and moderate disease activity groups each, and twenty-one subjects (52.5%) had high disease activity. Considering the total sample size of the study, the mean (SD) JADAS27 score and serum vitamin D level were observed to be 12.02 (11.31) and 23.10 (5.93) respectively. A negative correlation was found between the JADAS27 score and serum vitamin D (r= -0.67). The corrected Chi-square test had revealed significant association between the status of serum vitamin-D and disease activity groups (=16.28; p < .001). Conclusions In JIA, higher grade of disease activity was found to be significantly associated with lower serum vitamin D.