Someone sent me a sad link to a coroner’s report about a baby in Australia who died from bleeding due to late onset vitamin K deficiency. It’s an older case (2011), but I decided to do some research to see if this was something I needed to write about. Above the fold I found this from the Healthy Home Economist.
The “Healthy” Home Economist hits it out of the park when it comes to flagrant misunderstanding of medicine and biochemistry, but that’s not exactly new on the Internet. What caught my eye was the > 21k shares on Facebook, because if 21,000 pregnant women followed her advice to skip the vitamin K shot 1-2 babies will have potentially devastating bleeding.
Let’s start at the beginning and use science.
What is Vitamin K?
Among other things vitamin K helps blood to clot. Without it we can have catastrophic bleeding, even with no trauma. We don’t need very much of it (that why an adult has to be severely malnourished to have issues with vitamin K deficiency related blood clotting), but we need some.
There are 2 types of vitamin K: K1 or phylloquinone and K2 or menaquinone. Vitamin K1 comes from our diet (leafy green vegetables, cauliflower, turnip, and Brussels sprouts, avocado, banana, kiwi, and soybean oil). Vitamin K2 is primarily made by intestinal bacteria, like Bacteroides, but some may also come from diet (meats, eggs, and fermented cheeses).
Why is low vitamin K an issue in newborns?
Babies don’t have great stores at birth because vitamin K1 doesn’t cross the placenta very well. In addition, the newborn gut isn’t colonized sufficiently with the right bacteria to produce vitamin K2. The only source for a baby is food, but breast milk is very low in vitamin K so newborns can become vitamin K deficient. There 3 types:
- Early onset, within 24 hours when a pregnant woman was taking drugs that block vitamin K so her baby receives essentially none during pregnancy.
- Classical, onset 24 hours to 7 days. Often related to poor feeding. This happens in less than 0.5% of babies. Severe bleeding into the brain is less common, but other bleeding complications do occur.
- Late, 2-12 weeks. Seen in exclusively breastfed infants (formula is fortified with vitamin K). While the incidence in exclusively breastfed infants is relatively low (1/10,000 to 1 in 20,000) it is very high consequence – 50% will have brain bleeding and brain injury is not an uncommon outcome for the survivors and 20% will die.
We know from many good studies that giving a vitamin K shot at birth reduces the risk of bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency to essentially zero. The standard dose for a term baby is 1 mg. This is obviously much higher than the daily requirement because it is meant to boost the stores and carry a baby through the first 3-6 months. Oral vitamin K can be given, but has some drawbacks one being the cost and the other that it doesn’t seem to work as well as the shot.
Is this really an issue? I mean we evolved to be exclusively breastfed!
The catastrophic bleeding is well described (read through the coroner’s report if you want to know what actually happens).
A newborn appears to have several protective mechanisms against vitamin K deficiency induced bleeding, but obviously for 1/10,000-20,000 or so that doesn’t work. Why some babies get Vitamin K deficiency bleeding and others don’t is a bit like asking why some people get cancer and some people don’t.
Well, 1/10,000-20,000 doesn’t seem like it’s a lot…
The risk of a serious car accident driving home from the hospital is probably less than the risk of bleeding due to vitamin K, yet what parent wouldn’t put their newborn in a carseat on the ride home? A car accident, like vitamin K deficiency induced bleeding, is low probably but very high consequence for a newborn. This number translates to 100-200 babies who would be affected every year in the United States if no vitamin K were given.
Are vitamin K shots safe?
There was a previous concern raised many years ago (in the 1990s) in a small study (lower quality) about an potential association with an increased risk of leukemia, however 2 large retrospective studies and 6 case control studies show no increased risk. Proving a negative is very, very hard but there is no good data to support an association between leukemia and vitamin K shots. There is one case in the world literature of a baby dying from anaphylaxis (serious allergic reaction) to a vitamin K shot.
Isn’t the vitamin K shot synthetic and not real vitamin K?
The vitamin K1 newborns receive isn’t some Frankenstein vitamin K-like chemical, it is vitamin K1. If it were not it couldn’t be called vitamin K1. Phylloquinone is used for the natural form of vitamin K1 and the synthetic is called phytonadione. Making a vitamin in a lab doesn’t make it dangerous, it makes it bioindentical.
What about eating more vitamin K in pregnancy?
It doesn’t cross the placenta well so the baby doesn’t get it.
Now let’s compare what the “Healthy” Home Economist has to say versus science…
There is nothing “healthy” about encouraging parents to play roulette with their babies. There are many documented cases of severe bleeding due to parental refusal of vitamin K and what a generation of pediatricians had never seen is now returning.
The “Healthy” Home Economist is dangerously misinformed about vitamin K and her advice is potentially deadly.
References:
Dr. Jen Gunter 
And PS, there’s nothing ‘healthy’ about the home economist. The blog is proof that anybody can say anything on the internet without any qualifications whatsoever. America is a litigious society and one can only hope that the HHE has good public liability insurance.
http://evidencebasedbirth.com/evidence-for-the-vitamin-k-shot-in-newborns/
The attached article is an interesting read. As with immunisation, the success of the Vitamin K shot has resulted in complacency, and now we’re seeing cases of Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding on the increase. Yes, the incidence of bleeding is small, but the result is almost always catastrophic. I’m sure the parents of these newborns would not consider the numbers insignificant.
There IS a difference between synthetic and naturally occurring, just as with Vitamin E. DL denotes a synthetic LEFT TURNING molecule rather than right, which yes, looks the same but behaves differently. Thus the result of the Finnish male smokers getting lung cancer and the media saying supplements do harm.
D/L designation has nothing to do with being made in a lab. It is a reference to isomers.
None of the chemistry sources I looked at suggested that synthetic was a chiral form, but it may be. Many drugs are isomers and sometimes that matters, sometimes it doesn’t. But say for the sake or argument that synthetic vitamin K is a chiral form, well, it’s been well tested and is safe and effective so it’s moot.
You comments about vitamin E and Finnish male smokers have nothing to do with this post.
Many supplements don’t contain what they claim to, so there’s that. And thais why oral vitamin K can’t be used in the states because so many supplement companies lie about what is in their products.
I read the link to the documented cases. I love that people continually put their children at risk for reasons that they read on the Internet that are completely false. I bet they still speed even though it increases their risk of having a car accident, gotta get to their competitive mommy groups on time!
Ah, the triumph of ‘belief’ over evidence, over facts. Again. What’s your problem, America?
Why are so many of you so gullible?
Hi Jen, under the science column in the box comparison, the shot contains etc – the last sentence is confusing:
The dose makes the poison and doses of these inactive ingredients are safe. Or did you mean: The dose makes the poison and doses of these inactive ingredients safe. Thanks.
I guess that was a wordy way of saying that anything in the wrong dose can be a poisonous, even water, but everything in the Vitamin K shot is safe
That’s what I thought. As a former L&D RN I am always amazed at the stuff people come up with. Poor research, non-science. Thanks for being here. Beth