After all, it’s an essential vitamin.īut there’s more than just vitamin K in there, right? What about the other ingredients?Īside from the vitamin K, the preservative-free shots contain polysorbate 80, propylene glycol, sodium acetate anhydrous and glacial acetic acid-all safe, standard ingredients used to help the vitamin K dissolve, maintain the shot’s moisture or adjust the pH. Again, nothing is 100%, but the only documented effects are bruising at the injection site in some babies.
Vitamin K is one of the very few interventions with just about no risk of side effects except the temporary pain of an injection. What are the harms, risks or side effects of the vitamin K shot? Anywhere from 1 to 6 babies out of 100,000 who receive the oral vitamin K will still develop late bleeding. Oral vitamin K is also less effective than the shot-particularly for late vitamin K deficiency bleeding-because the shot’s vitamin K is absorbed more easily and lasts longer. It contains 0.5 to 1 mg of (depending on birth weight) vitamin K in one dose whereas oral vitamin K requires three carefully timed administrations-which are easy to forget, especially in the hectic first weeks after a newborn’s arrival. To almost entirely reduce the risk of vitamin K deficiency bleeding (nothing is 100%), the intramuscular shot is the way to go. Why do babies get an injection instead of taking it orally? Nearly all babies who experience vitamin K deficiency bleeding today are exclusively breastfed. In fact, exclusively breastfed babies have a higher risk than formula-fed babies of developing vitamin K deficiency bleeding because most formula is fortified with vitamin K (about 55 micrograms per liter). Since the vitamin is stored in the liver and doesn’t cross the placenta or flow freely throughout the body, cord blood doesn’t offer any more vitamin K than what a baby arrives in the world with, and breastmilk passes along a measly 1 microgram per liter, no matter how many supplements a nursing mother might take. Why doesn’t breastfeeding or delayed cord clamping protect babies from vitamin K deficiency bleeding?Ĭord blood is an excellent source of iron, and delayed cord clamping can offer benefits, but providing vitamin K isn’t one of them.
#VITAMIN K ANTIDOTE HOW TO#
As neonatal care improved, it became an unacceptable risk, and we learned in 1944 how to prevent it. Even then, infants suffered so many other complications and diseases before vaccines and other medical advances were widely available that such a rare condition didn’t garner much attention or resources.
When first discovered in 1894, vitamin K deficiency bleeding was called hemorrhagic disease of the newborn. Babies have always been born deficient, but again, it’s easily missed or misdiagnosed, so the condition flew under the radar for most of human history. They died or suffered the other serious long-term consequences mentioned above. What did babies do before we gave the shot? The treatment for the bleeding is vitamin K. Because it’s rare and internal, it’s always easy for the bleeding to go undiagnosed for too long, which probably contributes to the high mortality and long-term effects. About one in five babies who develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding die, and two of every five who survive have long-term brain damage. Late vitamin K deficiency bleeding, occurring when a baby is between 2 and 24 weeks old, affects an estimated 4 to 10 of every 100,000 babies who don’t receive vitamin K at birth. We get about 90% of our vitamin K from diet (mostly leafy green vegetables) and about 10% from bacteria in our intestines.
If our vitamin K levels drop too low, though the threshold varies from person to person, we can spontaneously bleed internally. It activates the molecules (clotting factors) that allow our blood to clot. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin that’s actually named after what it does: Koagulation, the German word for coagulation. Much of this information is available is also covered in the book Emily Willingham and I wrote, The Informed Parent: An Evidence-Based Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years, and the study references are available here. The best antidote to fear, misinformation or a general lack of information is knowledge, so let’s review the basics of what vitamin K is, why it’s needed and what it does-and doesn’t-do. The reasons range from faith-based ones to beliefs that it’s “unnatural” to anxiety about pain and possible side effects. Now a new study in the Journal of Medical Ethics explores the reasons that somewhere between 0.5% and 3% of parents decline the shot.
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