More and more parents are opting out of having their newborn babies receive vitamin K shots, a study found, sparking concerns among health experts.
Typically, infants are born with extremely low levels of vitamin K, which is a nutrient that the human body needs for blood to clot. This leaves babies at risk for severe bleeding early in their lives.
Vitamin K Shots for Newborn Babies
During the early 1960s, hospitals in the United States started to give newborns vitamin K shots within the first six hours of birth to prevent bleeding. This includes bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract or brain.
A neonatologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Kristan Scott, said that he and his co-authors in the study noticed an increase in parents opting out of vitamin K shots in their individual practices, which was the driving force behind the study.
Despite this, Scott said that he did not fully expect the results of the research they conducted. He added that a rise in the number of parents refusing the vitamin K shots was not surprising, but rather, it was the degree to which it increased that caught him off guard, according to NBC News.
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The study analyzed electronic medical record data taken from Epic Systems' Cosmos database, which included whether or not an infant received a vitamin K shot. Researchers looked at more than 5 million babies who were born in 403 different hospitals in 50 states, from 2017 to 2024.
They found that roughly 4% of the infants, which equated to about 200,000, who were born during that timeframe did not receive vitamin K shots. The number rose from less than 3% in 2017 to more than 5% in 2024. The researchers noticed that the trend was highest among non-Hispanic white babies.
Spreading Vaccine Misinformation
The study's findings come during a time of growing vaccine hesitancy and science denial among people living in the U.S. Many wellness influencers have repeatedly fueled skepticism by characterizing the vitamin K shot as unnecessary and questioning its lab-made ingredients, the Scientific American reported.
A senior author of the study, Kevin Dysart, MD, noted that the country's health system is working tirelessly to educate parents to reverse vaccine misperceptions and promote best practices in care.
On top of this, he emphasized that in 2025, CHOP joined Epic Cosmos, which acts as a learning healthcare system. This is so that providers and researchers are able to study collective patient experiences to discover various insights and improve care, as per PR Newswire.
