• Emre Basatemur, Rachael Hunter, Laura Horsfall, Alastair Sutcliffe, and Greta Rait.
• Population, Policy and Practice Programme, UCL Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1EH, UK. emre.basatemur@ucl.ac.uk.
• Eur. J. Pediatr. 2017 Oct 1; 176 (10): 1405-1409.

AbstractVitamin D has attracted considerable interest in recent years, with a marked increase in diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency seen among children in clinical practice in the UK. The economic implications of this change in diagnostic behaviour have not been explored. We performed a cohort study to examine longitudinal trends in healthcare expenditure arising from vitamin D testing and prescribing for children in primary care in England, using the electronic healthcare records of 722,525 children aged 0-17 years held in The Health Improvement Network database. Combined costs of vitamin D tests and prescriptions increased from £1647 per 100,000 person-years in 2008 (95% CI, £934 to £3007) to £28,913 per 100,000 person-years in 2014 (95% CI, £26,361 to £31,739). The total cost of vitamin D prescriptions and tests for children in primary care at the national level in England in 2014 was estimated to be £4.31 million (95% CI, £2.96-£6.48 million).

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