09.01.08
Testing for vitamin D levels, once uncommon, has skyrocketed as medical studies raise awareness about vitamin D deficiencies, according to three of the USA’s largest medical diagnostic labs. Physicians agree that they’re increasingly using the blood test to find out whether their patients are low on the vital vitamin.
Richard Reitz, a medical director with Quest Diagnostics of Madison, NJ, says tests ordered for vitamin D grew by about 80% from May 2007 to May 2008.
Burlington, NC-based Lab Corp. of America witnessed a 90% leap in D test requests from 2007 to 2008. Neither company would release the actual numbers for competitive reasons.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., another of the country’s largest diagnostic labs, processed 424,582 tests in 2007, up 74% from 2006. Ravinder Singh, co-director for the endocrine lab at Mayo, expects that the clinic will tally more than 500,000 tests by the end of 2008.
The jump in vitamin D testing comes after a slew of emerging research—much of which has been published in the past few years—linking vitamin D deficiency with some infectious diseases, cancers, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders.
Boston Medical School’s Michael Holick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics, says everyone should be taking 1000 IUs (international units) of vitamin D a day, even though the Institute of Medicine recommends only 200 IUs a day for children and 400 IUs daily for adults.
—Mary Brophy Marcus,
USA TODAY, 7/14/08
Richard Reitz, a medical director with Quest Diagnostics of Madison, NJ, says tests ordered for vitamin D grew by about 80% from May 2007 to May 2008.
Burlington, NC-based Lab Corp. of America witnessed a 90% leap in D test requests from 2007 to 2008. Neither company would release the actual numbers for competitive reasons.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., another of the country’s largest diagnostic labs, processed 424,582 tests in 2007, up 74% from 2006. Ravinder Singh, co-director for the endocrine lab at Mayo, expects that the clinic will tally more than 500,000 tests by the end of 2008.
The jump in vitamin D testing comes after a slew of emerging research—much of which has been published in the past few years—linking vitamin D deficiency with some infectious diseases, cancers, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders.
Boston Medical School’s Michael Holick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics, says everyone should be taking 1000 IUs (international units) of vitamin D a day, even though the Institute of Medicine recommends only 200 IUs a day for children and 400 IUs daily for adults.
—Mary Brophy Marcus,
USA TODAY, 7/14/08