Response to Vitamin D Deficiency in Patients with Alopecia Areata: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis and an Investigation of Vitamin D in Pediatric Patients

In the letter to the editor regarding the systematic review and meta-analysis of vitamin D deficiency in patients with alopecia areata (AA), the authors presented their own investigation of vitamin D levels in pediatric patients with AA, alopecia totalis (AT), and alopecia universalis (AU). They reviewed medical records of 439 children, with 96 meeting the inclusion criteria. The study found that 55.2% of the children had suboptimal vitamin D levels, with 33.3% being insufficient and 21.9% deficient. However, the frequency of deficiency was similar to that in a larger pediatric population. A weak positive correlation was found between serum vitamin D levels and Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) scores (Spearman's rho = 0.35, P = .009). The study suggests that children with autoimmune alopecia may not require additional vitamin D screening beyond what is standard for healthy children and highlights the need for larger, prospective studies to establish targeted vitamin D screening guidelines for children with AA, AT, and AU.