Vitamin Deficiency Disorders / Diseases List PDF – Overview
Vitamin deficiency is the condition of a long-term lack of a vitamin. When caused by not enough vitamin intake it is classified as a primary deficiency, whereas when due to an underlying disorder such as malabsorption it is called a secondary deficiency.
The history of the discovery of vitamin deficiencies progressed over centuries from observations that certain conditions – for example, scurvy – could be prevented or treated with certain foods having high content of a necessary vitamin, to the identification and description of specific molecules essential for life and health.
Individual vitamin deficiencies
- Thiamine (Vitamin B1) deficiency is especially common in countries that do not require fortification of wheat and maize flour and rice to replace the naturally occurring thiamine content lost to milling, bleaching and other processing
- Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) deficiency is especially common in countries that do not require fortification of wheat and maize flour and rice to replace the naturally occurring riboflavin lost during processing.
- Niacin (Vitamin B3) deficiency causes pellagra, a reversible nutritional wasting disease characterized by four classic symptoms often referred to as the four Ds: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death.
- Pantothenic acid (Vitamin B5) deficiency is extremely rare. Symptoms include irritability, fatigue, and apathy.
- Vitamin B6 deficiency is uncommon, although it may be observed in certain conditions, such as end-stage kidney diseases or malabsorption syndromes, such as celiac disease, Crohn disease or ulcerative colitis.
- Biotin (Vitamin B7) deficiency is rare, although biotin status can be compromised in alcoholics and during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- Folate (Vitamin B9) deficiency is common, and associated with numerous health problems, but primarily with neural tube defects (NTDs) in infants when the mother’s plasma concentrations were low during the first third of pregnancies.
- Vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to pernicious anemia, megaloblastic anemia, subacute combined degeneration of spinal cord, and methylmalonic acidemia, among other conditions. Supplementation with folate can mask vitamin B12 deficiency
- Vitamin C deficiency is rare. Consequently, no countries fortify foods as a means of preventing this deficiency.
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