(192f) Longitudinal Determination of Vitamin Concentrations in Tears and Blood Serum of Infants and Parents

The viability of utilizing tears for vitamin assessments is investigated. A subset of water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins were simultaneously determined in tears and blood serum of 52 family pairs; each pair consisting of one infant and one parent. The samples were collected longitudinally during the first year of the child's life. Vitamin concentrations were compared between tear and blood serum, between infant and parent and also against the self-reported nutritional information. Population trends were compiled and quantified using a cross correlation factor. Comparisons of tear vs. blood serum vitamin concentrations revealed no significant difference between tear and serum water-soluble vitamin concentrations, while significantly lower fat-soluble vitamin concentrations were observed in tears compared to serum. Extent of correlation between tear and blood serum vitamin concentrations were then quantified. These results demonstrate that vitamins a) are present and detectable in tears, and b) reflect levels present in blood serum, the current standard biofluid for nutritional screening tests. Infant vs. parent comparisons revealed higher water-soluble vitamin concentrations and lower fat-soluble vitamin A concentrations in infants than parents. Fat-soluble vitamin E concentrations were similar for infants and parents. Dimensions such as bottle-fed and breast-fed were also tracked with infant age and cross-correlated with vitamin concentrations. A higher correlation was found between vitamin concentrations of breast-fed infants and their parents in compared to bottle-fed infants and their parents. Correlations between infant and parent vitamin concentrations decreased longitudinally during the childâ??s first year and were attributed to the child's diet transitioning from breast-fed to solid food. Vitamin concentrations decreased in both infants and parents during the year of the study in parallel to diet quality assessed via reported dietary intakes. This talk will further discuss concentration results compared against gender, weight, length, head circumference, Apgar numbers, birth complications, excessive/minimal tear production and multivitamin intake. In summary, this study reveals the viability of long-term vitamin monitoring with tears and demonstrates the ability to less invasively screen nutritional health for tracking developmental variations with child growth over time. This work also emphasizes the dependency of infant's nutritional habits to parents.