Vitamin D-deficiency rickets in adopted children from the former Soviet Union: An uncommon problem with unusual clinical and biochemical features

Rickets is an unusual disorder in international adoptees. Three internation al adoptees from the former Soviet Union recently presented with rickets. T heir clinical and laboratory presentations were atypical, reflecting circum stances unique to children adopted from orphanages in the former Soviet Uni on and the early initiation of vitamin D therapy. In these children, radiog raphs of the long bones were diagnostic when the classically diagnostic bio chemical parameters, calcium and 25OHD(3) levels, were normal.