Seventy-five Percent Of Americans Have Sufficient Vitamin D, CDC Finds

About three-fourths of Americans have sufficient levels of vitamin D in their systems, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the CDC found that risk levels vary by age, sex, race and ethnicity. The findings, which are based on the serum 25OHD thresholds proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), show that about 25 percent of Americans were at risk of inadequacy and eight percent were at risk of deficiency between 2001 and 2006. Groups at lower risk included children, males, non-Hispanic white persons, and pregnant or lactating women. Though some doctors and researchers have expressed concern that people in the U.S. are vitamin D deficient and have urged increases in recommended levels of vitamin D, the IOM has backed off raising the values.