There are many other fortified foods such as breakfast cereals that also provide vitamin A. It is important to regularly eat foods that provide vitamin A or beta-carotene even though your body can store vitamin A in the liver. Stored vitamin A will help meet your needs when your intake from food is low.
When can vitamin A deficiency occur?
Vitamin A deficiency is rare in the US, but it is still a major public health problem in the developing world. It is most often associated with protein/calorie malnutrition and affects over 120 million children worldwide.
It is also a leading cause of childhood blindness. In countries where immunization programs are not widespread and vitamin A deficiency is common, millions of children die each year from complications of infectious diseases such as measles.
Signs of vitamin A deficiency include night blindness, dry skin, and decreased resistance to infections.
In ancient Egypt it was known that night blindness could be cured after eating liver, which was later found to be a rich source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency contributes to blindness by making the eye very dry, damaging the cornea of the eye (called xerophthalmia), and promoting damage to the retina of the eye.
Extremely dry skin, dry hair, sloughing off of skin, and broken fingernails are other common signs of vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency also decreases resistance to infections, and may contribute to the pneumonia associated with vitamin A deficiency.
There is increased interest in subclinical forms of vitamin A deficiency, described as low storage levels of vitamin A that do not cause overt deficiency symptoms.
This mild degree of vitamin A deficiency may increase children's risk of developing respiratory and diarrheal infections, decrease their growth rate, slow bone development, and decrease their likelihood of survival from serious illness.
Children living in the United States who are considered to be at increased risk for subclinical vitamin A deficiency include:
*toddlers and preschool age children
*children living at or below the poverty level
*children with inadequate health care or immunizations
*children living in areas with known nutritional deficiencies
*recent immigrants or refugees from developing countries with high incidence of vitamin A deficiency or measles, and
*children with diseases of the pancreas, liver, intestines, or with inadequate fat digestion/absorption.
Vitamin A
