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  • Response to Letter to the Editor
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Response to letter to the editor 2009EJCN0381 (Roth)

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 64, pages 915–916 (2010)Cite this article

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We thank Roth (2010, this issue) for his comments. Ours was a pilot study, as indicated in the title. As we have already mentioned in the shortcomings of our study, larger randomized studies with different dosage schedules and testing time points are definitely needed to establish dosage and toxicity issues in pregnancy. Logistic considerations did not allow us to address some of these issues. Furthermore, as mentioned in the paper, we wished to coincide the administration of the vitamin D doses with the routine antenatal visits of the community health worker in India, to allow the results to be extrapolated to clinical practice.

As regards the literature cited by Dr Roth, the report by Armas et al. (2004) was a study of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) till only 1 month after vitamin D dosing, but not longer. The study by Ilahi et al. (2008) (and also by Romagnoli et al., 2008) is useful to illustrate the pharmacokinetics of 25(OH)D after administration of a single oral large dose of vitamin D3, and we agree with their suggestion that the levels of 25(OH)D are maintained above baseline for a little beyond 2 months after an oral dose. These results were published only when our study was almost complete. Notwithstanding these facts, in our study, women in group C did have significantly higher levels of 25(OH)D at delivery than at baseline, and in comparison with other groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Endocrinology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India

    V Bhatia & M Sahu

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Queen Mary's Hospital, CSMMU (formerly King George's Medical University), Lucknow, India

    V Das & A Aggarwal

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  1. V Bhatia
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  2. M Sahu
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  3. V Das
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  4. A Aggarwal
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Correspondence to V Bhatia.

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Bhatia, V., Sahu, M., Das, V. et al. Response to letter to the editor 2009EJCN0381 (Roth). Eur J Clin Nutr 64, 915–916 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2010.2

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