Complications of dietary deficiency of vitamin B12 in young Caucasians.

Introduction Dietary deficiency of Vitamin B12 is a well recognized causative factor in the nutritional macrocytic anaemia seen in the Indian sub-continent (Chatterjea, 1958). A significant proportion of the Indian population may be classed as vegetarian, and in this group a lowering of the serum Vitamin B12 level has been clearly shown (Banerjee and Chatterjea, 1960). It is the purpose of this paper to report the occurrence of complications of dietary B12 deficiency in two young Anglo-Saxon vegetarians, one of whom presented with optic atrophy. In a previous investigation of British vegan patients, Smith (1962) has emphasized the paucity ofsymptoms in these patients, although two of the twelve patients he studied showed evidence of sub-acute combined degeneration. Other reports of complications of dietary B12 deficiency in caucasians include a patient with mild megaloblastic anaemia (Bourne and Oleesky, 1960) and a further patient with sub-acute combined degeneration of the cord (Misra and Fallowfield, 1971). We have been unable to find any previous reports of optic atrophy complicating veganism.