Vitamin D deficiency and autism; a review on recent findings

Abstract

Autism is a group of lifelong developmental disabilities with various genetic and environmental risk factors which is generally not curable. The proportion of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has risen over the past decade. Few studies have focused on vitamin D status of patients with autism. Therefore, this study was aimed to further investigate the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and autism. In this short review, we discuss the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and ASDs. Our literature review yielded over 80 articles published since 2006 in the electronic databases of the Web of Knowledge, EBSCO, OVID and PubMed. As the results showed, no significant difference between children with and without autism regarding vitamin D serum levels was obtained. According to the controversial results on the correlation of vitamin D serum value and autism in children with ASD, it is necessary to conduct further studies in this field.