Scorbut

BACKGROUND: Little is known about research in Foundling Hospitals during the 18th century. SUMMARY: The London "Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children" opened in 1741, after fundraising by the former shipmaster Thomas Coram and a Charter by King George II. From 1741 to 1756, fewer than 100 infants a year were admitted by lot. With onset of the Seven Years' War in 1756, the House of Commons resolved and financed the admission of all deserted babies...

Proptosis is a frequent presenting symptom/sign of many paediatric malignancies. Acute-onset proptosis is an ophthalmic emergency that can endanger vision if not treated promptly. Appropriate treatment must be instituted only after investigating for the underlying aetiology. Here, we report a developmentally delayed boy in middle childhood who presented with recent onset bilateral proptosis. Clinical examination followed by radiological evaluation suggested scurvy to be the underlying cause and vitamin C supplementation led to prompt reversal of proptosis...

The 1st millennium BCE in Italy was a time of agricultural intensification of staple cereal production which shaped sociocultural, political, and economic spheres of pre-Roman groups. The lifeways and foodways of the Etruscans, the greatest civilization in western Europe before Roman hegemony, are traditionally inferred from secondary written sources, funerary archaeology, archaeobotany, and zooarchaeology. However, no direct data extrapolated from the study of human skeletal remains are available to evaluate the extent to which agricultural intensification and decreased dietary diversity impacted health and the expression of skeletal indicators of metabolic disease...

Different studies have established the fundamental role of vitamin C in proliferation, differentiation, and neurogenesis in embryonic and adult brains, as well as in in vitro cell models. To fulfill these functions, the cells of the nervous system regulate the expression and sorting of sodium-dependent vitamin C transporter 2 (SVCT2), as well as the recycling of vitamin C between ascorbic acid (AA) and dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) via a bystander effect. SVCT2 is a transporter preferentially expressed in neurons and in neural precursor cells...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Severe and long-term vitamin C deficiency can lead to fatal scurvy, which is fortunately considered rare today. However, a moderate state of vitamin C (vitC) deficiency (hypovitaminosis C)-defined as a plasma concentration below 23 μM-is estimated to affect up to 10% of the population in the Western world, albeit clinical hallmarks in addition to scurvy have not been linked to vitC deficiency. The brain maintains a high vitC content and uniquely high levels during deficiency, supporting vitC's importance in the brain...

BACKGROUND: Scurvy is a clinical syndrome resulting from ascorbic acid deficiency. Although presently rare in the developed world, it continues to occur within certain susceptible populations, particularly the elderly and those with dietary habits with low vitamin C intake. CASES: Two men aged 87 and 69 were referred with multifactorial, progressive ulceration of the lower limbs, without scarring, in a context of arterial disease and other associated comorbidities...

The east coast of New Holland was discovered 250 years ago during a voyage of covert strategic exploration of the Pacific Ocean regions by Lieutenant James Cook acting under instructions of the Royal Navy espionage chief, Philip Stephens, Secretary of the Admiralty. In addition to the study of the transit of Venus, the well resourced mission included some clandestine mapmaking during August 1768 to July 1771. Tasked by the Royal Society of London to investigate the anti-scorbutic effects of a variety of foods and herbs, Cook's post-operational debrief to the Admiralty included the inaccurate supposition that HM Bark Endeavour's cruise was scurvy-free...

Vitamin C is incorporated into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) through choroid plexus cells. While the transfer of vitamin C from the blood to the brain has been studied functionally, the vitamin C transporter, SVCT2, has not been detected in the basolateral membrane of choroid plexus cells. Furthermore, it is unknown how its expression is induced in the developing brain and modulated in scurvy conditions. We concluded that SVCT2 is intensely expressed in the second half of embryonic brain development and postnatal stages...

Vitamin C (ascorbate) is important for neutrophil function and immune health. Studies showing improved immune function have primarily used cells from scorbutic animals or from individuals with infectious conditions or immune cell disorders. Few studies have focused on the requirements of neutrophils from healthy adults. Therefore, we have investigated the role of vitamin C, at concentrations equivalent to those obtained in plasma from oral intakes (i.e., 50-200 µmol/L), on key functions of neutrophils isolated from healthy individuals...

Scurvy, a disease caused by a deficit in vitamin C, is again described in Europe nowadays. This condition is associated with poverty and malnutrition, as found in developing countries. However, denutrition may also occur with a "western" lifestyle that can lead to nutriment deficiencies. In the following report is described a case of scurvy in a person suffering from alcoholism.

Vitamin C is an essential micronutrient in the human diet. While large population studies measuring vitamin C have been performed in other countries, there are few studies of deficiency in the Australian population. This study aimed to quantify vitamin C deficiency, identify scorbutic symptoms and examine dietary associations in a cohort of preoperative general surgical patients. Vitamin C levels were determined in a cohort of patients referred to a single surgeon between January 2011 and December 2013. Baseline data were collected along with data on fruit consumption, weekly citrus fruit intake and presence of scorbutic symptoms...

Recent analysis of the juvenile (≤12 years) human remains from a 19th century site in Wolverhampton, England revealed a relatively high level of nutritional deficiency diseases within the population. Indeed, 41.7% of the 48 juvenile skeletons analysed exhibited a combination of porous and proliferative bone lesions consistent with the pathological alterations associated with nutritional stress. This paper describes a pathological lesion on the inferior surface of the basilar portion of the occipital bone, not previously reported in association with infantile scurvy, but which was exhibited by 90% (N=9) of the 10 scorbutic individuals identified during this study...

Vitamin C (VitC) deficiency is surprisingly common in humans even in developed parts of the world. The micronutrient has several established functions in the brain; however, the consequences of its deficiency are not well characterised. To elucidate the effects of VitC deficiency on the brain, increased knowledge about the distribution of VitC to the brain and within different brain regions after varying dietary concentrations is needed. In the present study, guinea pigs (like humans lacking the ability to synthesise VitC) were randomly divided into six groups (n 10) that received different concentrations of VitC ranging from 100 to 1500 mg/kg feed for 8 weeks, after which VitC concentrations in biological fluids and tissues were measured using HPLC...

The role of vitamin C (ascorbate) in cancer prevention, tumor growth, and treatment is of intense public interest. Clinical trial data have been sparse, contradictory, and highly controversial, and robust pre-clinical data are required for progress. This paper reviews pre-clinical models and their limitations with respect to ascorbate research. Most studies have utilized animals able to synthesize ascorbate and thus are not ideal models of the human condition. More recently, genetically modified mouse models have become available; yet, all studies compared healthy and scorbutic mice...

A study was conducted to evaluate tissue storage and mobilisation of L-ascorbic acid (AA) in the Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baeri) fed three different experimental diets. The three treatments consisted of a diet devoid of vitamin C (diet A0) and two diets supplemented with equivalent of 300 mg AA kg(-1) in the form of either silicone-coated ascorbic acid (diet SC) or of ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (diet AP). During the first phase (4 months) of the trial, six batches of 130 Siberian sturgeon (initial body weight: 25...

This case reports a rare condition of scurvy which posed a diagnostic difficulty. However, a thorough medical and diet history, along with clinical and histopathological examination aided in prompt diagnosis and successful management of the case. Occurrence of scurvy in today's contemporary society is said to be rare. Lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet can lead to this condition. Diagnosis may be difficult due to its rarity and presence of non specific symptoms, which may pose a challenge to the clinician...

From their distinctive experience of going around the world, maritime circumnavigators concluded that their characteristic disease, sea scurvy, must result from their being away from land too long, much longer than any other sailors. They offered their scorbutic bodies as proof that humans were terrestrial creatures, physically suited to the earthly parts of a terraqueous globe. That arresting claim is at odds with the current literature on the cultural implications of European expansion, which has emphasized early modern colonists' and travelers' fear of alien places, and has concluded that they had a small and restricted geographic imagination that fell short of the planetary consciousness associated with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...

The term 'scurvy' for the disease resulting from prolonged vitamin C deficiency had origins in 'scorbutus' (Latin), 'scorbut' (French), and 'Skorbut' (German). Scurvy was a common problem in the world's navies and is estimated to have affected 2 million sailors. In 1747, James Lind conducted a trial of six different treatments for 12 sailors with scurvy: only oranges and lemons were effective in treating scurvy. Scurvy also occurred on land, as many cases occurred with the 'great potato famine' in Ireland in 1845...