Vitamin D deficiency and its association with depression in Saudi female students at Taibah University

Abstract EN

Recent studies on vitamin D levels and depressive symptoms have indicated that a deficiency of vitamin D in the blood may associate with depression.

however, further investigations are warranted to unravel the link between depression and vitamin D.

therefore, the current work aims to indicate and evaluate the association between vitamin D deficiency and depression in female students of Taibah University.

a cross-sectional study was performed to determine depressive outcomes for participants with deficiency in vitamin D compared with those with normal levels of vitamin D.

the 100 female students were recruited in current study.

Data was processed using the software package of SPSS 20.

independent t-test was applied as far as mean ± SD concerned.

The P-value  0.05, 0.001 was considered as statistically significant.

It was found that 14% of patients had severe score of depression correlating with severe deficiency of vitamin D (DD) and 17% of mediatory depression patients had DD.

However, normal female subgroup had insufficient and normal levels of vitamin D (42% and 9%, respectively) according to HAM-D scores.

Furthermore, patients with severe depression and mediator depression had significantly lower levels of vitamin D when compared with patients without depressive disorders (P<0.05).

Current study provides a strong evidence about the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression in female students at Taibah university.