Positive impact on vitamin D related lifestyle of medical advice in pregnant Somali-born women and new mothers: a mixed method study in Swedish primary care

Table 1 Characteristics of the 123 pregnant women and new mothers at baseline

	Somali-born	Swedish-born
n	52	71
Age, years, m (SD)	28 (6)	31 (5)
Height, cm, m (SD)	161 (5)	167 (6)
Education, years, m (SD)	3.3 (3.4)	13.8 (2.5)
Years in Sweden, m (SD)¹	3.5 (2.6)
S-25-OHD, nmol/L, m (SD)²	16 (10)	49 (18)
Grip strength, N, m (SD)	199 (58)	318 (66)
Milk, dl/day, m (SD)	1.8 (2.0)	3.6 (1.9)
Cheese times/w, md (IQR)³	2.5 (2.5)	4.3 (1.7)
Fish times/w, md (IQR)⁴	0.7 (1.0)	0.8 (0.5)
Exercise times per week, md (IQR)⁵	1.5 (1.5)	1.8 (1.2)
Outdoors, n (%)⁶	31 (61)	66 (96)
Veiled clothing, md (IQR)⁷	1.1 (0.3)	0.0 (0.0)
Sun exposure face, neck, forearms, n (%)	13 (25)	65 (96)
Sun vacation in winter, n (%)	1 (2)	11 (16)

¹ Most of the Swedish-born women had lived all their lives in Sweden
² 1/3 of Somali-born women had 25-OHD < 10 nmol/L. The value < 10 was replaced with a 9 for the calculation of the mean. The Somali median value was 12 nmol/L
³ Cheese times/w; 0 = never, 2 = 1–2 times/w, 4 = 3–5 times/w, 6 = 6–7 times/w
⁴ Fish times/w; 0 = never, 1 = 1–2 times/w, 3 = 3 or more times/w
⁵ Exercise times per week; 0 = seldom or never, 1 = 1–2 times/w, 3 = minimum 3 times/w or more
⁶ Outside minimum 30 min per day in summer
⁷ Veiled clothing; 0 = short armed sleeves, short legs/skirts in summer, 1 = long sleeves/legs without covering face and hands, 2 = long arms/skirts, scarf covering head/face, burka
n Numbers, m Mean, SD Standard deviation, cm Centimeter, N Newton, dl Deciliter, w Week, md Median, IQR Interquartile range

ISSN: 1471-2458