NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A diet completely lacking in fruits and vegetables caused a young college student to develop a condition linked to a low intake of vitamin C, US researchers reported Tuesday.

The young man developed scurvy even though he was eating plenty of calories and had no deficiencies in most other vitamins and minerals. Scurvy, a disease characterized by bleeding gums, loose teeth, muscle degeneration and weakness, was once the scourge of sailors, who found that sucking on a lime could keep the disease at bay.

The student confessed to doctors that he ate no fruits and vegetables, consuming only a few types of foods--namely, cheese, crackers, soda, cookies, chocolate and water.

Based on the patient's diet, researchers estimate he was taking in around 0.1 milligram of vitamin C per day. The current recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin C for nonsmoking men is 90 milligrams per day.

This case demonstrates that even seemingly healthy people can develop a deficiency in vitamin C, study author Barbara Hermreck of the Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Kansas told Reuters Health.

Just because people eat enough food, "that doesn't mean that it's a given that they are getting enough vitamin C," she said.

Hermreck added that the student would have needed to take in only minimal amounts of vitamin C to offset his risk of developing scurvy. She estimated that most men and women could meet their daily vitamin C needs with only one four- to eight-ounce glass of orange juice.

"It doesn't take much orange juice to keep it from being a problem," she said.

She and her colleagues presented the case Tuesday during a meeting of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition in San Antonio, Texas.

Scurvy is a relatively uncommon condition, Hermreck explained, although it tends to pop up more often among the elderly or alcoholics, who tend to have highly unbalanced diets. However, previous research has suggested that many Americans have relatively low levels of vitamin C in their blood, but the deficiencies are not extreme enough to develop into scurvy.

Smoking cigarettes and feeling stressed can also boost vitamin C needs, Hermreck noted.

The patient featured in the current case study visited a doctor because he was experiencing swelling and bruising on his legs. Hermreck explained that one of the signs of scurvy is a change in skin color on the legs, a result of bleeding underneath the skin.

A further examination showed the patient had bleeding gums and a rapid heartbeat.

The patient was diagnosed with scurvy after he revealed his eating habits and blood samples showed levels of vitamin C that were at least four-fold below normal range.

After only four days of taking a multivitamin and a vitamin C supplement, the bruising and discoloration in the patient's legs had almost disappeared, his gums had ceased to bleed and his heart rate decreased. Another two weeks of extra vitamin C improved his condition even further, Hermreck noted.

"It was just a number of days" before the patient began to improve with extra vitamin C, she said.

People need vitamin C every day, Hermreck added. However, she said she believed that clinical signs of scurvy would not appear until after between one and three months of a consistently low intake of vitamin C, such as less than five milligrams per day.

Reference Source 89