الفهرس 
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Abstract
Nutritional rickets is gaining the attention of public health professionals and individual clinicians worldwide as the disease remains an endemic problem in many developing countries. In the middle East, vitamin D deficiency and ricket continues to be a public health problem despite abundant all year sunshine in many of the regions. The cause of rickets in Egyptian children remains an enigma. Limited sunlight exposure, gestational vitamin D deficiency and low socioeconomic status have a key role in the pathogenesis of the disease.
The vitamin D stores of the newborn depend entirely on the vitamin D stores of the mother. If the mother is vitamin D-deficient, the infant will be deficient because of decreased maternal fetal transfer of vitamin D.
The current study was designed to evaluate vitamin D status in neonates taking into account maternal vitamin D status in the first week of life.
The study was conducted on one hundred neonate-mother pair during the first week of life attending the neonatology clinic in Alexandria University Children’s Hospital.
All neonate-mother pairs were subjected to complete history taking, clinical examination and laboratory investigations ( Ca, P, ALP, 25(OH)D).
Statistical analysis of data obtained from the present study revealed the following results:
High prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among pregnant women and their neonates was observed. 42% of the newborns were vitamin D deficient and 44%were insufficient, while 43% of the studied mother were insufficient and 4% of them were vitamin D deficient.
There was significant relation between vitamin d status of the mother and her newborn with a positive correlation between 25(OH)D levels in the serum of both. (r= 0.813 , p <0.001).
Some biochemical changes related to decreased vitamin D level was noticed. 47%of the studied neonates were hypocalcemic, while 67% of the mothers were hypocalcemic and 60% of them had increased serum level of ALP.
There was a positive correlation between calcium level in the serum of the mother and her newborn. (r= 0.427, p <0.001).
There was significant relation (p<0.001) between inadequate sunlight exposure, frequent previous pregnancies, low socioeconomic standard, older age of the mother, and insufficient calcium supplementation, and low vitamin D levels of the mother and her newborn .
Vitamin D deficiency is a multifactorial condition. Inadequate sunlight exposure, previous pregnancies, low socioeconomic class seem to be the most important contributing