assessment of correlation between costochondritis and vitamin d insufficiency in school-age children

Background: in children, vitamin d deficiency can result in the hypertrophy of costochondral junctions and sternal pain. objectives: in this study, we aimed at determining the correlation between children’s vitamin d status and costochondritis. methods: this cross-sectional study included a control group (100 healthy children) and a study group (100 children with costochondritis). examination of patients included chest radiography, physical examination, history-taking, electrocardiography, echocardiography, and serum measurement of 25-hydroxyvitamin d, phosphorus, calcium, and alkaline phosphatase. the chisquare test, spearman’s correlation test, and independent samples t-test were also performed for analyzing the data. results: the groups showed no significant difference regarding age, gender, or body mass index (p = 0.315, p = 0.671, and p = 0.097, respectively). the history of patients experiencing idiopathic chest pain showed cardiac disease in 13% of their families, without report of death in the family. the pain was mainly located in the left precordium (64%), followed by the right precordium and the midsternal region (32% and 18%, respectively). a significantly lower level of 25-ohd was found in the study group than in the control group (p < 0.0001). based on the findings, the groups were not significantly different regarding the evaluated biochemical parameters, except for alkaline phosphatase (p = 0.007). the results showed that pain duration and episodes were significantly associated with vitamin d insufficiency (r = -0.621, p = 0.002; r = -0.213, p = 0.021, respectively). conclusions: vitamin d insufficiency should be considered in costochondritis. also, pain duration and episodes have associations with vitamin d insufficiency. this finding emphasizes the necessity of evaluating nutritional parameters in children with non-cardiac chest pain.