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The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a single intramuscular dose of vitamin K for newborns since 1961; however, in the last decade parents have increasingly elected to skip the shot.

Elizabeth Wolf, M.D., MPH, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU and an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, led a nationwide study to understand the change in vitamin K deficiency (VKD) and vitamin K–deficient bleeding (VKDB). The results are published in JAMA Pediatrics.

"We knew from prior studies that vitamin K refusal had been increasing in the U.S., and we wanted to learn if there were any real-life consequences of this trend," Wolf said. "We found that the answer is undeniably yes, with the rates of VKD and VKDB multiplying over the course of our study."

Steven Woolf, M.D., Director Emeritus of the VCU Center on Society and Health and professor in VCU School of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine, was a co-author, along with Evan French, MS, of VCU's C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and Darya Shokouhi Niaki, Pharm.D., of the VCU School of Public Health's Department of Biostatistics.

Vitamin K is essential for the activation of specialized proteins needed for normal blood clotting. Newborns have a deficiency of vitamin K because of inefficient transfer of vitamin K from the placenta, poor gastrointestinal absorption and low vitamin K content in breast milk.

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