Effect of adjunctive vitamin D supplementation as measured by serum vitamin D And NGF levels in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Open-label trial.

Studies have established that vitamin D deficiency is one of the risk factors of evolutional neuropsychological disorders including autism (Canell, 2008;Eyeles et al., 2013;Saad et al., 2016) with a few denying the possibility of a deficiency(Molloy et al., 2010; Hashemzadeh et al.,2015) . To date there are twelve human clinical trials on Vitamin D supplementation in ASD (Kittana etal., 2021) which have methodological shortcomings related to study design (case series)(Saad et al.,2016), non- adherence to standard dosing guidelines. (Feng et al., 2017;Bleizgys a,2021)Use of concurrent supplementation (omega fatty acids) and lack of positive correlation between vitamin D level and severity of ASD (Javadfar et al 2020;Mazahery et al., 2019).There is just single study finding NGF levels to be significantly increased in the vitamin D supplementation group in ASD (Ucuz et al., 2014).We therefore decided to conduct present study to evaluate the usefulness of vitamin D Supplementation in ASD, the effects of which are being measured by assessing the serum levels of 25 hydroxycholecalciferol and NGF