A 5-year-old boy who lived on a diet of chicken and biscuits has been diagnosed with the rare disease scurvy.<\/p>\n
Scurvy is\u00a0a disease caused by severe, prolonged vitamin C deficiency, and is historically associated with sailors who lacked fruit and vegetables at sea hundreds of years ago.<\/p>\n
The Wellington boy was so weak from the disease he could barely stand or walk, a report in the NZ Medical Journal\u00a0found.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rare diagnosis led doctors who treated him to urge their colleagues to check patients\u2019 diet history for vitamin C deficiency, especially the elderly and autistic children who may eat a narrow range of foods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The report said the boy had non-verbal autism spectrum disorder associated with restricted eating.\u00a0 He was brought to an orthopaedic clinic after his parents noted significant discomfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Symptoms of scurvy include extreme fatigue, bleeding\/swollen gums, bruising, joint pain, and corkscrew hairs. Treatment involves daily vitamin C supplementation, which usually reverses symptoms quickly.<\/p>\n
Doctors carried out a physical examination, blood tests and an MRI examination. Eventually, they consulted paediatric rheumatology and infectious diseases teams about the boy\u2019s condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Restricted diet\u00a0<\/p>\n
More tests found the boy had swollen, bleeding gums and a faint rash on his lower legs. Further blood tests focusing on nutritional deficiencies returned low vitamin C levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA detailed history revealed a diagnosis of autism with avoidant\/restricted food intake with a restricted diet consisting of solely chicken and biscuits \u2013 devoid of any vegetables or fruits,\u201d the report said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA presumed diagnosis of scurvy was made secondary to this restricted diet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scurvy is often thought of as a historical disease, particularly in the 15th to 18th centuries. It was predominantly associated with sailors who spent long periods at sea without fresh fruit and veges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
– Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 5-year-old boy who lived on a diet of chicken and biscuits has been diagnosed with the rare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-328145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}