LETTER

The prevalence of rickets among non-Caucasian children

S Ashraf, M Z Mughal

Department of Paediatric Medicine, Saint Mary’s Hospital for Women & Children, Hathersage Road, Manchester M13 0JH, UK; zulf.mughal@man.ac.uk

Keywords: rickets; Asian

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We welcome the timely review by Shaw and Pal¹ on the continuing problem of vitamin D deficiency among South East Asians living in the UK. Since our report in 1999,² we have continued to see 8–10 non-white toddlers with florid vitamin D deficiency rickets per year, at our inner city general paediatric unit. A recent national survey showed that 20–34% of South East Asian children had biochemical evidence of vitamin D deficiency.³ However, there is no information on the prevalence of clinical rickets among non-Caucasian children in the UK.

We opportunistically studied 6–36 month old children from ethnic minority backgrounds who were brought to a child health clinic in Central Manchester between 30 May 2001 and 12 July 200 for immunisations, weight checks, hearing tests, and developmental assessments. A structured questionnaire was used to determine if the children were receiving vitamin D supplements and whether they had been prescribed by . . . [Full text of this article]

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