Vitamin B12 Deficiency: an Update for the General Paediatrician

Vitamin B12 deficiency is an important and possibly under recognised cause of neurological morbidity in infants. The causes of infantile vitamin B12 deficiency are heterogeneous, ranging from dietary deficiency in a breast feeding mother to specific inborn errors of metabolism. In this brief review we discuss the clinical presentations of vitamin B12 deficiency, provide a practical approach to the investigation and management of infantile vitamin B12 deficiency, and consider specific neurometabolic reasons why the infantile central nervous system is vulnerable to irreversible damage from Vitamin B12 deficiency. *Corresponding author: David Coman, Department of Metabolic Medicine, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, 4029, Australia, Tel: 61736368111; Fax: 61736365505; E-mail: [email protected] Received October 08, 2013; Accepted January 02, 2014; Published January 06, 2014 Citation: Smith J, Coman D (2014) Vitamin B12 Deficiency: an Update for the General Paediatrician. Pediat Therapeut 4: 188. doi:10.4172/2161-0665.1000188 Copyright: © 2014 Smith J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.