Tyler Attrill developed severe leg pains and was found to lack vitamin D, the deficiency which leads to the Victorian slum disease. Despite living in one of the sunniest places in the country, she had too little direct exposure to sunlight, doctors said. Hers is one of a growing number of cases of a disease thought to have been eliminated more than 80 years ago, but now occurring in children of all backgrounds.
Full-blown rickets causes deformities including bowed legs and curvature of the spine, and was associated with children growing up in dark 19th century tenements. It is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D, manufactured when the skin is exposed to sunlight.
Tyler's mother Lisa, a 36-year-old nurse from Sandown, Isle of Wight, said her daughter and son Ben, aged 10, enjoyed playing outside with friends but had always worn sun cream in hot weather. The Isle of Wight frequently records more hours of sunshine in a year than anywhere else in Britain. "We live right by the beach so Tyler was outside with her friends every day last summer," Mrs Attrill said. "I've always been very careful with her and her brother, and nagged them to wear hats and sun cream when it's hot. "I used to put factor 50 cream on to protect her skin. I thought I was doing the right thing."
She and husband Kevin, 49, first noticed a problem three years ago after Tyler had two operations to correct displaced leg bones unconnected with her condition. Their daughter failed to recover properly from the surgery, suffering severe pain a lot of the time. "Sometimes it would happen if she did too much exercise, but sometimes it would be out of the blue," said Mrs Attrill. At times, Tyler could not play with her friends and she had to give up her Irish dancing classes. The family took her to several doctors in a number of hospitals without result.
It was only in November, when they went to Southampton General, that doctors there, who had started to see similar cases, tested for vitamin deficiency. Describing the pain, Tyler said: "It would make my legs really heavy so I couldn't move them, and if I did they would click, and then that would really hurt. I couldn't move and I was crying at some points because it was so bad. It made my whole body feel really ill." Tyler was prescribed multivitamin tablets and her vitamin D levels are now far better. Her family want to publicise the dangers.
There are no national figures for cases of rickets which largely disappeared once the link to vitamin D was discovered in the 1920s. But doctors at Southampton General have seen more than 40 children from all backgrounds suffering with the condition in the last 12 months. Doctors in Newcastle upon Tyne were seeing 20 cases a year, they reported in the British Medical Journal last year, partly blaming the amount of time children spent indoors playing computer games. Prof Nicholas Clarke, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Southampton General, said: "What has developed in Southampton is quite astonishing. "We are seeing cases across the board, from areas of deprivation to the middle classes. "Many of the children we've seen have low vitamin D and require treatment. "This is almost certainly a combination of the modern lifestyle, which involves a lack of exposure to sunlight and covering up in sunshine."
