This disease had “practically disappeared”, according to the AP-HP (Paris Hospitals) which is warning of its resurgence in France since the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is a new consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2020, the number of cases of a forgotten disease has increased: scurvy. This is a severe deficiency of vitamin C, an essential vitamin which must be supplied through food. This disease had, however, “practically disappeared at the end of the 20th century in high-income countries, particularly in Europe”, note Inserm, the Robert-Debré hospital (AP-HP), Paris Cité University and the department of pediatrics of the hospital of Cayenne and Guyana in a joint press release released on Wednesday, December 18. They investigated the evolution of the number of cases before and after the pandemic (between 2015 and 2020 then between 2020 and 2023) in patients under 18 years old.
A total of 888 scurvy patients, with an average age of 11 years, were hospitalized during the 9 years of the study. But the study authors noted that the number of cases increased by 34% after the start of the pandemic in 2020. Children aged 5 to 10 were particularly affected, since the number of cases in this range d he age has increased by 200% since the pandemic, according to the study report published in the journal The Lancet in early December.
Scurvy is a disease that can be serious: it can cause “intense bone pain, disabling muscle weakness, hemorrhages and a deterioration in general condition”, list the authors of the press release. Without treatment – which simply consists of providing vitamin C – scurvy can even lead to death.
But how can we explain this “worrying return” of scurvy since the Covid-19 pandemic? According to the authors of the study, this phenomenon could be a consequence of “the increase in socio-economic precariousness since 2020”. Scurvy is generally caused by malnutrition.
The authors of the study did not make this hypothesis by chance: they in fact analyzed the evolution of the number of cases of scurvy in correlation with “socio-economic factors such as the consumer price index” . They realized that the number of cases of severe malnutrition has also increased by 20% since the start of the pandemic. According to them, “the increased incidence of scurvy was correlated with the rise in the consumer price index.”
France is not the only country affected by the resurgence of scurvy. For several years, a few countries have been making the same observation. For example, the number of scurvy cases tripled in the United States between 2016 and 2020.
