1 The Medical Department of the Children's Hospital, Gothenburg, and the Department of Pathology, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden.
In a series of 181 consecutive cases of infants who had died soon after birth, 103 (56.9%) showed definite histologic signs of rickets. Of the 69 infants dying during the first day of life, 20 (29%) had rachitic changes and in these the rickets must be regarded as congenital. Of the 181 cases, 154 were premature, weighing less than 2,500 gm. at birth. The incidence of rickets was about the same in the premature and the full term infants in this material. The incidence of rickets increases rapidly with increasing age during the first weeks of life.
Submitted on April 15, 1949