The Features of Vitamin D Deficiency in Jeddah City: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Unhealthy lifestyles can lead to a deficiency in vitamin D, as it is found in few food sources.Objective: To investigate the characteristics of vitamin D deficiency in the people of Jeddah City, especially in relation to obesity.Methods: Vitamin D level was assessed for 141 visitors to university clinic in year 2023, including 107 females and 34 males.Vitamin D level and body mass index (BMI) were assessed for each visitor.Immunoassay was used to measure vitamin D level.Vitamin D levels were divided into phases following clinical practice recommendations.Data were recorded in an Excel sheet and three tables were extracted.Results: Visitors aged between 20 and 50 years are the most interested to measure vitamin D as 70.4% of total number of cases are mostly between 40 and 50 years and 43 are visitors (30.6%), followed by young population between 20 and 30 years with 34 visitors (24.1%), and then 30s population with 22 visitors (15.7%).Females are the most frequent visitors as 105 (74.5%).Most of the cases are vitamin D-deficient with 122 patients (86.5%).Mild deficiency is the most common in 60 individuals (42.5%) followed by moderate deficiency with 57 patients (40.5%).Most of Jeddah population have high BMI with 59.6% of total cases.Most of the cases are overweight with 43 patients (30.5%) and class I obesity with 25 patients (17.7%).Conclusion: Most of Jeddah City citizens have minor vitamin D deficiency between 30 and 40 ng/mL, particularly middle-aged women.Highest interest to measure vitamin D is mainly the age between 20 and 50 years, mostly 40-50 years.Most of Jeddah residents are overweight or have first-degree obesity in their late 30s.The relationship between BMI and vitamin D level is inverse.These results are consistent with the Saudi findings, and obese Saudi females are considered as the highest risk for vitamin D deficiency.The most important clinical action which can give a huge positive effect is health education.To our knowledge, this is the first study which relates vitamin D deficiency with obesity in Jeddah city.