Connect
MJA
MJA

Scurvy and stroke — is there an association?

Emily Y-J He, Louis W Wang and Matthew C Kiernan
Med J Aust 2010; 193 (9): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb04051.x
Published online: 1 November 2010

To the Editor: We report a case of ischaemic stroke in a 34-year-old man with severe vitamin C deficiency caused by poor nutrition. The patient was a lifelong non-smoker with no history of hypertension or hypercholesterolaemia, and no family history of stroke, although he had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus.


  • 1 Prince of Wales Hospital and Prince of Wales Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
  • 2 NeuroScience Research Australia, Sydney, NSW.


Correspondence: m.kiernan@unsw.edu.au

Acknowledgements: 

We thank Karen Tokutake, the stroke unit dietitian at Prince of Wales Hospital, for her assistance in managing this patient during his inpatient stay and calculating the patient’s intake of essential nutrients.

  • 1. Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council; New Zealand Ministry of Health. Nutrient reference values for Australia and New Zealand including recommended dietary intakes. Canberra: NHMRC, 2006; 119-125.
  • 2. Frikke-Schmidt H, Lykkesfeldt J. Role of marginal vitamin C deficiency in atherogenesis: in vivo models and clinical studies. Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol 2009; 104: 419-443.
  • 3. Ranjan A, Theodore D, Haran P, Chandy MJ. Ascorbic acid and focal cerebral ischaemia in a primate model. Acta Neurochir (Wien) 1993; 123: 87-91.
  • 4. Hampl JS, Taylor CA, Johnston CS. Vitamin C deficiency and depletion in the United States: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988 to 1994. Am J Public Health 2004; 94: 870-875.
  • 5. Kurl S, Tuomainen TP, Laukkanen JA, et al. Plasma vitamin C modifies the association between hypertension and risk of stroke. Stroke 2002; 33: 1568-1573.

Author

remove_circle_outline Delete Author
add_circle_outline Add Author

Comment
Do you have any competing interests to declare? *

I/we agree to assign copyright to the Medical Journal of Australia and agree to the Conditions of publication *
I/we agree to the Terms of use of the Medical Journal of Australia *
Email me when people comment on this article

Online responses are no longer available. Please refer to our instructions for authors page for more information.