December 09, 2025
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Babies under 6 months do not have enough vitamin K to help clot their blood. That is why newborns should receive vitamin K shots, health experts say. But fewer babies are receiving them, a CHOP study finds.
Fewer newborns are receiving a routine shot that helps prevent life-threatening bleeding, because their parents are opting out of it, a new study shows.
The number of infants who are not getting the vitamin K shot — which is essential for helping blood clot during the first six months of life — has risen by 77% since 2017, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found.
Health care providers have been noting anecdotally that more parents are declining the shots for their babies. CHOP researchers set out to learn how widespread the issue was, using a large national database to analyze health records of nearly 5 million babies from more than 400 hospitals in the United States.
The percentage of newborns who did not receive vitamin K shots rose from 2.92% in 2017 to 5.18% in 2024.
"There may be a growing perception among parents that vitamin K is unnecessary," said Dr. Kristan Scott, the study's lead author and a CHOP neonatologist. "Unfortunately, opting out of Vitamin K for a newborn is akin to gambling with a child's health, forgoing a straightforward and safe measure that effectively prevents severe complications."
The findings were published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Giving newborns vitamin K shots as a prophylactic measure became part of normal child health care in the early 1960s.
The shots, which are not vaccines, are important because babies are born with insufficient vitamin K. This deficiency can lead to devastating and potentially fatal bleeding in infants, called vitamin K deficiency bleeding, or VKDB, CHOP says.
Babies who do not get vitamin K shots at birth are 81 times more likely to get severe bleeds, which often occur in the intestines and the brain, than babies who get the shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Yes. Giving babies vitamin K shots is safe, according to CHOP and other health authorities, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Some people became concerned about the vitamin K shot after a 1990 study found an association between the shot and childhood cancer – a link that has since been refuted. Multiple, larger studies have found no evidence of any association between vitamin K shots for babies and increased risk of leukemia and other cancers, the American Academy of Pediatrics says.
Growing hesitancy among parents about routine childhood immunizations, which has caused a decline in kindergarten vaccination rates, also may be contributing to the drop in adherence to vitamin K shot recommendations, Dr. Tiffany McKee-Garrett, an associate professor of pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, told NBC News. McKee-Garrett was not involved in the CHOP study.
Also, VKDB is rare in the United States, in large part because babies have routinely received vitamin K shots shortly after birth. So parents may not fully understand the risks of declining the shot, Dr. Ivan Hand, director of neonatology at NYC Health + Hospitals Kings County in Brooklyn, told NBC News. Hand was not involved in the CHOP research.
CHOP is working to "reverse vaccine misperceptions and promotes best practices in care," said Dr. Kevin Dysart, one of the study's senior authors and an attending neonatologist at CHOP.
