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 international adoptees from the former Soviet Union recently presented with rickets. Their clinical and laboratory presentations were atypical, reflecting circumstances unique to children adopted from orphanages in the former Soviet Union and the early initiation of vitamin D therapy. In these children, radiographs of the long bones were diagnostic when the classically diagnostic biochemical parameters, calcium and 25OHD₃ levels, were normal.