Scientists have discovered the cause of mass infant mortality after 80 years

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have found the answer to the 80-year-old mysterious mass death of newborns due to kidney damage – infantile hypercalcemia.

It turned out that in some cases the body is not able to properly absorb vitamin D, which is why kidney stones form – this is due to an excess of calcium in the blood. More about the study writes MedicalXpress.

The reason for the high infant mortality was the increased consumption by people in the 1930s and 1940s of foods high in calcium such as milk, bread, cereals and margarine. At that time, there was public concern about another serious disease, rickets, which arose from a lack of vitamin D.

The scientists concluded that infantile hypercalcemia type 1 (HCINF1) was triggered in the body due to a mutation in the CYP24A1 gene. However, this did not fully explain the causes of high mortality, since a part of the world population, 10%, does not have such a mutation, but medicine still knows cases when people died from hypercalcemia for no reason.

Using next-generation genetic sequencing and computer modeling of the studied blood samples, the researchers found that people with HCINF1 without an obvious mutation have another DNA structural feature that regulates the activity of CYP24A1: due to this abnormal factor, the mRNA structure in the human body can change, which can affect manifestation of CYP24A1: a similar algorithm worked in the process of assimilation of vitamin D.