| WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Rickets, a disease associated with the factory
sweatshops and dark, polluted skies of the Industrial Age,
could be making a comeback among some groups of Americans,
researchers said on Friday.
A
team at the University of North Carolina said they had
noted a marked increase in the number of rickets cases,
especially among African-American infants.
They
believe mothers are not getting enough vitamin D during
pregnancy -- both because of a lack of sunlight and because
they are not getting fortified foods -- and setting their
babies up for deficiencies.
``We
reported 30 cases of rickets in the last six years or
so,'' Dr. Ali Calikoglu, assistant professor of pediatrics,
said in a telephone interview.
``Almost
half of them were in the last year, 1998-1999. That suggested
to us that there may be an increase. Interestingly enough,
all of the cases were infants of African-American mothers
and all of them had been breast-feeding exclusively in
the first six months of life.''
Rickets
is caused by a lack of vitamin D, which the body produces
naturally when bare skin is exposed to sunlight.
It
causes a loss of calcium in the bones, which in turn leads
to the characteristic bowed legs, enlarged wrists and
other deformities of rickets, as well as a failure to
thrive.
``Other,
more serious, consequences of rickets would be seizures
due to low serum calcium levels,'' Calikoglu said.
He
said the condition was usually easily treated with supplements.
``If
you treat them appropriately, most of the bone deformities
would improve,'' Calikoglu said. ``But if the diagnosis
is made late, and treatment is not appropriate, some of
the deformities might need surgical correction.''
Prevention,
he said, was simple. Take the babies out in the sun a
little and give them supplements, which are available
as oral formulations.
Pregnant
women should take prenatal vitamins and should get a little
sun, as well. Studies suggest that just 10 minutes a day
of exposing the arms and forearms to direct sun will do
the trick for a light-skinned woman, although not at northern
latitudes in winter. Dark-skinned people may need more
but little scientific study has been done.
Dr.
Henry Kirkman, a pediatrics professor who helped lead
the study, said late 20th-century habits may put people
at risk of rickets. ``For the past million years, people
didn't spend a lot of time watching television in homes
with central heating and central air conditioning,'' he
said in a statement.
The
name rickets evokes images of Victorian-era sweatshops,
where children labored from before dawn to well past dusk.
The
lack of sunshine, combined with skies darkened by industrial
pollution, made vitamin D deficiency common in the 1800s
and early 1900s in developed countries.
``Rickets
is a 19th-century disease,'' Calikoglu said.
``Since
the 1930s in the United States, dairy products and wheat
products are fortified with vitamin D. It helped to almost
eradicate rickets in North America and most Western European
countries.''
But,
he said, it can still be a problem in some developing
countries, such as in his native Turkey. ``I have seen
many cases of rickets in Turkey, not because of a lack
of sunlight but because mothers preferred using unfortified
cow's milk. It was cheaper.''
Calikoglu
also noted that in Islamic societies where women are required
to cover up, they can become vitamin D deficient.
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