BURDEN OF VITAMIN B12 DEFICIENCY IN URBAN POPULATION IN DELHI, INDIA: A HOSPITAL BASED STUDY

Abstract

Vitamin B12 deficiency is common in elderly and vegetarians, but whether screening should be carried out only for these high risk groups or for the entire population, is controversial. Vitamin B12 assays performed on 422 patients in Biochemistry laboratory of tertiary care hospital over a period of 1 year were reviewed. Individuals were considered to be vitamin B-12 deficient if vitamin B-12 was < 200 pg/ml and borderline deficiency if levels were <350 pg/ml. Women and vegetarians were found to have higher risk of vitamin B12 deficiency (OR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.41 to 0.93; OR: 4.68, 95% CI: 2.39 to 9.15 respectively) whereas in contrast to earlier studies, no effect of age was noticed in our population (OR: 1.23, 95% CI: 0.64 to 2.38). However more investigations are required to elucidate etiological factors associated with substantial heterogeneity in vitamin B-12 levels.