Scientists Uncover Unseen Culprit Behind Historical Vitamin D Deficiency

Research led by the University of Otago has discovered that the widespread occurrence of rickets among children during the Industrial Revolution was not solely caused by factory labor and urban pollution, which were previously thought to be the main contributors to vitamin D deficiencies of that era.

In a Marsden-funded study, just published in PLOS One, researchers from Otago, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, University of Brighton, and University of Queensland, sampled teeth from a cemetery site in industrial-era England, looking for microscopic markers of nutritional disease.

Lead author Dr Annie Sohler-Snoddy, Research Fellow in Otago’s Department of Anatomy, says they uncovered some of the first clear evidence of seasonal vitamin D deficiency in an archaeological sample.