ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry
Sec. Developmental Psychopathology and Mental Health
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frcha.2025.1609002
This article is part of the Research TopicSevere Mental Illnesses in Children: Unravelling Developmental Trajectories, Neuropsychiatric Impairments, and Chronic PainView all articles
Vitamin D concentrations and headache risk in children and adolescents aged 6-19 years: the mediating role of body mass index
Provisionally accepted
- Kunming Children's Hospital, Kunming, China
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BACKGROUND: Vitamin D plays an important role in neural function and immune regulation, and vitamin D deficiency may increase headache risk. However, the results of existing studies are inconsistent. This may be related to differences in study populations, research methodologies, and criteria for defining vitamin D levels. In addition, childhood and adolescent obesity may influence headache development through metabolic and inflammatory pathways, but the specific role of body mass index (BMI) in the relationship between vitamin D and headache is currently unclear. Therefore, this study used National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) large-scale population-based data to investigate the association between vitamin D levels and headache risk in children and adolescents aged 6-19 years and to analyze the possible mediating effect of BMI on this relationship.METHODS: The aim of this study was to explore the complex association between vitamin D levels and headache. We analyzed two cycles of the NHANES dataset, which included a total of 7066 children and adolescents aged 6-19 years. Multivariate linear regression models, subgroup analyses and smoothed curve fitting were used to investigate the associations between vitamin D levels and headache, and the potential mediating role of BMI was explored. RESULTS:The results of the present study revealed a evident negative correlation between vitamin D levels and headache risk in children and adolescents, a finding that was further supported by smoothed curve fitting. Notably, this negative correlation was stronger in the female and adolescent groups. The results of the mediation analysis revealed that BMI had a evident mediating effect, with a mediation ratio of 20.94%.CONCLUSION: This study found that lower vitamin D levels were associated with a higher likelihood of headache in children and adolescents, and that BMI may play a partial mediating role. Maintaining optimal vitamin D and a healthy weight may help reduce the headache burden in adolescents. This finding provides new strategies for the prevention and treatment of headache in children and adolescents. More prospective studies are necessary to further validate this association and its underlying mechanisms.
Keywords: Vitamin D, Headache, BMI, Cross-Sectional Studies, mediation analyses
Received: 09 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Xie, Guo, liu and zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
kai liu, Kunming Children's Hospital, Kunming, China
tiesong zhang, Kunming Children's Hospital, Kunming, China
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