Prenatal exposure to vitamin D from fortified margarine and risk of fractures in late childhood: period and cohort results from 222 000 subjects in the D-tect observational study

Prenatal low vitamin D may have consequences for bone health. By means of a nationwide mandatory vitamin D fortification programme, we examined the risk of fractures among 10–18-year-old children from proximate birth cohorts born around the date of the termination of the programme. For all subjects born in Denmark during 1983–1988, civil registration numbers were linked to the Danish National Patient Registry for incident and recurrent fractures occurring at ages 10–18 years. Multiplicative Poisson models were used to examine the association between birth cohort and fracture rates. The variation in fracture rates across birth cohorts was analysed by fitting an age-cohort model to the data. We addressed the potential modification of the effect of vitamin D availability by season of birth. The risk of fractures was increased among both girls and boys who were born before the vitamin D fortification terminated in 1985 (rate ratio (RR) exposed v. non-exposed girls: 1·15 (95 % CI 1·11, 1·20); RR exposed v. non-exposed boys: 1·11 (95 % CI 1·07, 1·14). However, these associations no longer persisted after including the period effects. There was no interaction between season of birth and vitamin D availability in relation to fracture risk. The study did not provide evidence that prenatal exposure to extra vitamin D from a mandatory fortification programme of 1·25 µg vitamin D/100 g margarine was sufficient to influence the risk of fractures in late childhood, regardless of season of birth. Replication studies are needed.