Too Much of a Good Thing

The well-advertised bottle of vitamins has earned itself such a prominent place on the American breakfast table that many a mother has been moved to cram the kids with pills. If a little of the stuff is good--so the reasoning runs--a lot must be better. Not so, says Orthopedic Surgeon Charles N. Pease; parents should pay more heed to warnings about the possible dangers from vitamin overdosage. In the A.M.A. Journal, Dr. Pease cites specific examples of damage done by too much vitamin A: it has stunted children's growth or left one leg two to three inches shorter than the other.

Even in the best hospitals. vitamin-A child poisoning often goes undetected because its very symptoms--irritableness, painful movements, and tenderness to the examining doctor's touch--along with X-ray changes, are all too easily confused with the signs of syphilis, leukemia, or even, ironically, scurvy, which results from a deficiency of vitamin C. But if the X rays show premature hardening of the gristlelike ends where children's bones grow, says Dr. Pease, physicians should be alert for vitamin poisoning.

At Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Pease has studied one 18-year-old girl ever since she was seven. When he first saw the patient, her left leg was already two inches shorter than her right. He learned that when she was three, her mother had given her almost three teaspoonfuls of vitamin-A preparation every day--about 50 times as much as the three drops her doctor had prescribed to treat a mild rash. The overdosage could be measured in the girl's blood, which showed a vitamin-A level of 943 units, compared with a normal range of 30 to 60 units. To stimulate the growth of the girl's left leg. Dr. Pease put ivory implants in the bones, but he could not cure the damage already done. The difference in leg length has remained constant at two inches. The girl is only 4 ft. 10 1/2 in. tall, though her father stands 5 ft. 11 in., and her mother 5 ft. 4 in.

In another case, a mother began giving her daughter whopping doses of multiple vitamins when she was only three weeks old. The baby also got one egg yolk every day; soon, she got vegetables generously doused with butter. The diet added up to an enormous oversupply of vitamin A. Now nine years old, the girl has a right leg almost three inches shorter than her left.

Though excess vitamin A can affect all bones equally and cause dwarfing, a difference in leg length usually develops because the child tends to favor whichever leg becomes more painful. Dr. Pease's one hopeful note: if vitamin-A poisoning is detected and stopped in time, the effects are less severe. A girl whose condition was diagnosed when she was only 22 months old already had some permanent bone damage; she is now twelve and there is a leg-length difference of only about a quarter of an inch.

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