Doctors in the UK are calling for foods to be fortified with vitamin D, after an increase in the number of cases of rickets was recorded.

The Daily Mail reports that Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham of Newcastle University are calling for a review of public health policy to prevent further increase in a disease that was once the scourge of Victorian Britain.

Although white British children can develop rickets through lack of exercise and a diet deficient in vitamin D – known as the sunshine vitamin because levels can be boosted by spending time outdoors – an increasing number of cases has been seen in children of British Asian, African-Caribbean and Middle Eastern backgrounds in the UK. In Birmingham, the PCT has been offering pregnant women supplements of the vitamin to try and stem the increase in cases of rickets in the city. Newcastle has reported more than 20 new cases annually.

Doctors say that children are leading increasingly sedentary lifestyles sitting in front of televisions and computers – and are not playing outdoors and thus building up their vitamin D levels in the sun. Vitamin D was traditionally given to children in the UK via a daily dose of cod liver oil, but this practice is thought to be on the decline.

Rickets was common in the slum terraced houses of Victorian Britain, which were built close together in industrial areas where daylight could not penetrate easily. Rickets was thought to have been eradicated in the UK after WWII, when the National Health Service was set up. Classic symptoms of vitamin D deficiency include seizures, bowed legs and fragile bones.

As early as 1919, doctors used sun-ray lamps to increase levels of vitamin D in patients. Today, children have to be outdoors as beneficial UV rays do not pass through glass –

exposure to sunshine accounts for 90 per cent of vitamin D intake in humans.

Senior lecturer in paediatric endocrinology at Newcastle University, Dr Cheetham, said that he was ‘dismayed’ at the resurgence of the condition. Writing in the British Medical Journal he said:

'Fifty years ago, many children would have been given regular doses of cod liver oil, but this practice has all but died out.

'I am dismayed by the increasing numbers of children we are treating with this entirely preventable condition.’

The required amount of daily sunshine in summer would be 15 minutes’ exposure to the arms, shoulders and head, say experts. Many breakfast cereals are also fortified with vitamin D, as well as eggs, margarine and oily fish such as sardines or herrings.

Prof Pearce said that a more ‘robust’ approach to statutory food supplementation was needed in Britain to ensure children received the recommended daily dose of vitamin D – other parts of the world already supplement foods with the vitamin, he added.

Vitamin D deficiency can go on to cause health problems in adults, including soft bones, cardiovascular disease, diseases of the autoimmune system – and several types of cancer.

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