Researchers from Boston University found that pregnant women who didn’t have a sufficient amount of vitamin D had an increased risk of delivering a baby by surgery, compared to women who didn’t lack the vitamin. .

The risk of C-section delivery may be almost 4 times higher for heavy with child women with a reduced level of vitamin D than those who don’t have a deficiency of the vitamin, the study revealed.

Michael Holick, MD, PhD, and colleagues from the Boston Medical Center followed more than 250 pregnant women so as to establish the connection between vitamin D levels in expecting women and C-section. 17 percent of participants delivered a baby by Caesarean section.

In the two years of follow-up, pregnant women who lacked vitamin D when they gave birth to their babies “had almost four times the odds of Caesarean birth than women who were not deficient," asserted study author Dr. Holick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics.

The findings appeared online in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Vitamin D enters the human body mostly when exposed to sunlight, but it can also be found in foods such as oily fish, eggs, as well as fortified cereals.

Previous studies disclosed another connection between mothers’ vitamin D intake during pregnancy and babies. It seems that a low level of the vitamin in expecting women leads to an increased risk of tooth decay early in the infant’s childhood, as well as a higher probability of developing cavities at an early age.