Pediatric Scurvy: When Contemporary Eating Habits Bring Back the Past

Scurvy is a well-defined clinical condition secondary to chronic ascorbic acid deficiency, currently anecdotal in developed countries. Neurological disorders, autism, iron overload due to multiple transfusions, chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant and hemodialysis are considered the main predisposing conditions in modern age (1, 2). The diagnosis is often misleading, since other morbidities as malignancies, coagulopathies, septic arthritis, osteomyelitis or rheumatologic disorders are often considered at first (3–5). We report the case of an otherwise healthy child who developed scurvy as consequence of strictly selective diet; the patient underwent extensive and invasive examinations before the correct diagnosis was considered.