Bilal Rafique Malik, Muhammad Hassan Zafar, Samiullah Khan.
Role of Vitamin D as Adjuvant Therapy of Hypovitaminosis D in patients of Schizophrenia.
Pak J Med Health Sci Jan ;13(1):303-5.

Background: It is suggestive epidemiologically that the schizophrenia etiology may include the heritable as well as environmental influence also. Although an important role may also been played by other molecular mechanisms that refer the genetic and environmental interaction. Aim: To evaluate role of vitamin d as adjuvant therapy of hypovitaminosis D in patients of schizophrenia. Methods: An observational case control design was opted to the study, where the schizophrenia patients visiting the outpatient department of Mayo Hospital were recruited for this study. The recruited patients were actually belongs to two categories of schizophrenia a) in remission named as group A and b) with an acute episode named as group B. Moreover age and sex matched controls (named as group C) were also recruited for this study. For the current study, the entire renal failure patients, the patients having past surgical history and the patients with the heart disease were excluded and all the patients that were 18 and above years old having schizophrenia that was declared as per the Diagnostic and Statistical (DS) Manual of Mental Disorders (MD), 4thedition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) were included. Results: The current study includes 120 patients. Out of which, 40 schizophrenia patients in remission (group A) and equal number of patients in schizophrenia acute episode group (group B) and same number of health controls (group C) with no psychopathology. The average patient’s age in group A was 40+/- 8.9, in group B was 38.7+/-8.9 and group C was 41.55+10.55 with range 18-65 for all three groups. There were 26(65%) men and 14(35%) women in group A, 21(52.5%) men and 19(47.5%) women in group B and 18(45%) men and 22(55%) women ingroup C. We observed a significant lower total vitamin D level in acute episode patients than remission and control group (7.14, 15.02, 15.01 respectively P-value 0.001). The difference of the total vitamin D levels among the remission group and the healthy controls was found insignificant. Conclusions: We may conclude that the vitamin D role as adjuvant therapy of hypovitaminosis D in patients of schizophrenia is very vital and well demonstrated by our study.

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