Rickets

Excerpt

Vitamin-D, calcium, and phosphorus are the main factors that influence bone maturation and mineralization. Defective mineralization can lead to rickets and/or osteomalacia. Rickets is characterized by a defect in mineralization and the widening of the epiphyseal plates. Osteomalacia, however, is a defect in the mineralization of the bone matrix. Both rickets and osteomalacia usually occur together in children. Rickets occurs exclusively in children, whereas adults develop osteomalacia after the epiphyseal plate fusion. Whistler, Boate, Glisson, and their colleagues, Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians, London, in the seventeenth century, were the first to describe rickets in the medical literature. Nutritional rickets is the most common cause of bone disease all over the world.