Vitamin D Status in the North African Population: a Review

Abstract

Even though the North African countries are located in one of the sunniest place in the world, several North African studies from there proved a high prevalence of hypovitaminosis D in men and women. The objectives of the present review are to summarize the existing literature on vitamin D status and to list the main predictors of hypovitaminosis D in North African population. We searched Medline/PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, Embase, Scopus, and Springerlink for the published data on vitamin D in North African countries. The identified articles had to meet all the following criteria: human clinical outcomes rather than animal experiments, a cross-sectional or longitudinal study and quantitative information on vitamin D status in North Africa must be included. Several studies proved a high prevalence of hypovitaminosis D in North African men and women. Also, these studies reported that determinants of vitamin D status were the culture of avoiding the sun, the wearing of the veil for women, the pigmented skin, the lack of vitamin D supplementation in the aliments, the breastfeeding for 2 years. This review on vitamin D status in North Africa indicates a high prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency in men and women (among all age groups).