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Vitamin B12 Deficiency in Infancy: The Case for Screening
Gurpreet Singh1,2, Doan Le2,3, Kareena Schnabl4,5
1Sections of Paediatric Haematology and Paediatric Oncology, Department of Paediatrics, Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Abstract:
The classic principles put forth by Wilson and Jungner are often applied to determine the suitability of a condition for universal newborn screening. The three cases described here portray the harmful effects of vitamin B12 deficiency in infancy. The challenges and opportunities of early recognition and treatment are highlighted. Screening newborns would allow early detection and prevention of severe neurological damage in vitamin B12 -deficient infants and enable diagnosis of unrecognized maternal pernicious anemia in asymptomatic mothers. However, lack of standardized methodology and screening cutoffs present challenges to the use of current tandem mass spectrometry technologies for screening.
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