Media Reports of Vitamin A Toxicity in Kids Being Treated for Measles ‘Misleading,’ Doctor Says
Source: Children’s Health Defense
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to come under fire for promoting vitamin A amidst the West Texas measles outbreak.
Under the headline, “What to know about vitamin A’s toxic risks after RFK Jr. promotes it for measles,” Axios reported that “some unvaccinated child measles patients in Texas — the state with the most cases — have shown signs of vitamin A toxicity, including abnormal liver function.”
Axios cited a March 25 New York Times article that broke the news, stating that “physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.”
According to the Times, the doctors observed “yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes in their bloodwork, both signs of a damaged liver.”
CNN on March 26 reported that the same doctors had found “abnormal liver function on routine lab tests.”
Those reports are “misleading,” according to Dr. Richard Bartlett, who told The Defender that abnormal liver function lab work — such as elevated liver enzymes — doesn’t necessarily indicate vitamin A toxicity.
Bartlett, an emergency room (ER) doctor in West Texas with over 30 years of experience, said media claims about vitamin A toxicity are “making a leap in logic that is illogical” because other factors — besides high vitamin A levels — can cause liver enzymes to rise.
According to the Mayo Clinic, elevated liver enzymes can be caused by “many diseases, medications and conditions,” including mononucleosis, the Epstein-Barr virus, hepatitis A, B, and C, nonprescription pain medicines such as Tylenol, some prescription drugs used to control cholesterol such as statins, and consuming alcohol.
The doctors at Covenant Children’s Hospital would need to do a vitamin A blood test to accurately conclude that patients had toxic levels of vitamin A. The media reports made no mention of vitamin A blood tests.
Bartlett said, “I am not aware of one child in West Texas with blood test results showing toxic levels of vitamin A.” However, “I treated a child with mononucleosis who had elevated liver enzymes” in just the last 48 hours, he said.
The child — who lives in the area where the measles outbreak occurred — did not receive vitamin A and did not have measles, he said. The child came into the ER with respiratory symptoms consistent with several infections, including the flu, mono, measles and strep throat.
ER staff, including Bartlett, did the lab work. The child tested positive for mononucleosis and strep. The child had no measles rash and was not tested for measles.
Bartlett emphasized that an estimated 10% of respiratory infections are coinfections, “meaning the patient has more than one type of infection going on.”
The media reports failed to specify the types of infections in the patients who showed signs of abnormal liver function and whether those other infections might be linked to abnormal liver function.
Meanwhile, USA Today on April 1 reiterated the claim, stating that doctors at Covenant Children’s Hospital reported “seeing an uptick in vitamin A toxicity cases as families use the vitamin to help treat measles.”
Dr. Lara Johnson, the chief medical officer for Covenant Health in Lubbock, said in a statement:
“At Covenant Children’s, we have encountered cases of vitamin A toxicity, indicated by abnormal liver function in routine lab tests … We’ve seen fewer than 10 cases involving unvaccinated pediatric patients, all initially hospitalized due to measles complications. Some patients reported using vitamin A for both treatment and prevention of measles.”
The statement made no mention of vitamin A blood test results.
Johnson was unavailable for comment, so it remains unclear how many of the cases of “vitamin A toxicity” involved patients who reported using vitamin A. It’s also unclear what kinds of infections, or coinfections, the patients who showed abnormal liver function had.
The Defender asked Covenant Health’s Senior Media & Community Relations Manager Meredith Cunningham to clarify Johnson’s statement and if the hospital had performed vitamin A blood tests for any of the patients referenced in the statement.
“We have no further comment beyond the statement that you already have,” Cunningham said.
When asked to comment on the media reports of vitamin A toxicity in measles patients, Dr. Bed Edwards — who has successfully treated many children in the West Texas measles outbreak using cod liver oil, a food-based source of vitamin A and vitamin D, and budesonide, a steroid used to relieve inflammation affecting the airways — told The Defender:
“I really can’t say much about any supposed vitamin A toxicity in kids in the hospital without seeing them, the chart, etc. But this does seem very, very questionable, as it is well known that measles depletes the body of vitamin A.
“On a side note, I see elevated liver enzymes in children — and adults — more and more often now and it’s due to fatty liver disease.”
Edwards said fatty liver disease was “almost unheard of 20 years ago” but is now “almost the ‘new normal’” and is “directly related to the standard American diet.”
The Defender asked Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health, if she was aware of any vitamin A blood test results done for patients related to the measles outbreak. Wells said she wasn’t familiar with how Covenant Children’s Hospital tests for vitamin A.
How much vitamin A is healthy versus harmful still up for debate
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the body needs vitamin A for healthy immune function and healthy skin, eyes and hair.
Unlike water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C, which can be excreted through urination, vitamin A is fat-soluble. If a person takes in too much of it, the body stores vitamin A in fat cells rather than excreting it.
According to the Mayo Clinic, taking too much vitamin A can be harmful and has been linked to birth defects when taken excessively during pregnancy.
What constitutes optimal versus toxic levels of vitamin A is still debated. For instance, a 2017 Weston A. Price Foundation blog post argues that vitamin A plays an important role in healthy human reproduction and suffers from “unfair stigmatization.”
The Weston A. Price Foundation is a nonprofit “founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated nonindustrialized peoples established the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics of human diets.”
Price, who lived from 1870 to 1948, did research suggesting that the diets of healthy indigenous people contained roughly 10 times the amount of food-based vitamin A than people he observed in the U.S.
According to the foundation, it’s generally difficult, though not impossible, for a person to develop vitamin A toxicity from consuming food-based sources, such as cod liver oil.
Vitamin A levels are measured in micrograms of retinol activity equivalents (mcg RAE). Daily recommended levels vary from 500 mcg RAE and 1,800 mcg RAE, depending on one’s age, sex, and whether the person is pregnant or breastfeeding, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
For babies and children 8 and younger, the recommended vitamin A daily allowance ranges from 300 to 500 mcg RAE, according to a National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheet.
In early March, Kennedy told Fox News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a statement that supported the administration of vitamin A — under physician supervision — as supportive care for measles.
The CDC’s statement said:
“Consistent with guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, vitamin A may be administered to infants and children in the United States with measles as part of supportive management. Children with severe measles, such as those who are hospitalized, should be managed with vitamin A.
“Vitamin A should be administered under the supervision of a healthcare provider and is not a substitute for vaccination. Overuse of Vitamin A can lead to toxicity and cause damage to the liver, bones, central nervous system, and skin.
“Pregnant women should avoid taking high levels of vitamin A as it has been linked to severe birth defects.”
This article was funded by critical thinkers like you.
The Defender is 100% reader-supported. No corporate sponsors. No paywalls. Our writers and editors rely on you to fund stories like this that mainstream media won’t write.
Vitamin A news reports a ‘distraction’
In Bartlett’s view, the continued media storm around Kennedy’s endorsement of vitamin A is an “attack” on Kennedy that serves as a “distraction” from the fact that the U.S. healthcare system is “broken.”
Bartlett noted that less than five years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration claimed in court that it would need 75 years to release redacted versions of all documents related to the agency’s approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine.
Additionally, the CDC’s former director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, erroneously told the U.S. public that the COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission of the virus.
Bartlett said, “Those are just two examples of how broken the system is. Kennedy is acting as a catalyst to correct the system so it serves the American people.”
Related articles in The Defender
