Jane Schmitz, clinical assistant professor and research and curriculum advisor for the USC Institute for Global Health, is the lead author of an article published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Jan. 10, 2012, documenting a previously unknown benefit of vitamin A supplementation among preschool children on risk of hearing loss in young adulthood.
About the study:
Schmitz and her colleagues conducted hearing evaluations among a cohort of young adults who enrolled as children in a randomized controlled trial of vitamin A supplementation in rural Nepal to examine the effect of randomized, periodic receipt of high-dose of vitamin A during the preschool years on hearing loss in early adulthood. The study found that in undernourished settings, high-dose vitamin A supplementation reduced the risk of hearing loss by 42% among subjects with purulent ear infections in the preschool years.