Exam 29: Vitamins and Minerals

A 28-year-old man who saw the doctor because of numbness of the feet is found to have a hematocrit of 26%.Except for frequent bouts of gastritis for which he self-medicated with antacids, there is nothing unusual in his medical history.A blood test shows unusually large erythrocytes, and a metabolic screen reveals methylmalonic acid in his urine.This is most likely a case of:

A woman in her early 30s is found to be a hemochromatosis homozygote, but her serum ferritin level and transferrin saturation are only slightly increased.Which of the following is most likely to further increase her serum iron?

Acute severe fat malabsorption can cause deficiencies of fat-soluble vitamins.The fat-soluble vitamin that becomes deficient first, after only 1 or 2 weeks of fat malabsorption, is:

After developing mild jaundice, a teenage boy is found to have an alanine transaminase level eight times higher than the upper limit of normal.A low level of serum ceruloplasmin is subsequently found.There is no fever.This boy most likely has:

Niacin deficiency causes pellagra.This disease is seen only in patients with a diet that is low in both niacin and:

Sunlight is good for your bones because:

Free radicals are molecular terrorists that attack molecular targets indiscriminately.Their formation in the body cannot be prevented, because they are unavoidable byproducts of oxidative metabolism, but physicians can try to intercept them before they hit a sensitive target-for example, by an extra good supply of:

On your arrival in a refugee camp in a nation undergoing civil war, you notice that many people in the camp have severe skin lesions on parts of the body that are exposed to the sun.The residents of the camp have to subsist on maize and cassava, everything else having been confiscated by the military.The vitamin deficiency that is the most likely cause of these skin lesions is:

Retinoic acid is a form of vitamin A that is most important as a:

A medical student is brought to the student health center in a confused state.His friends report that he is a heavy drinker and that he subsisted mainly on cola fortified with gin during the past 2 years.However, he does not seem acutely drunk when seen by the doctor.It would be prudent to give this student immediately a high dose of:

Cholecalciferol, formed by the action of sunlight on 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin, has to be converted to the fully active calcitriol before it can induce its physiological actions.The rate-limiting step in this process is catalyzed by an enzyme in:

Vitamin deficiencies are rarely seen in newborns.However, one vitamin that should be given shortly after birth to prevent any risk of deficiency is:

What is true about scurvy?

You look over the laboratory reports of 500 medical students to determine the frequency of iron deficiency in this population.The best way to identify iron deficiency from laboratory reports would be to define as iron-deficient all those with:

The iron overload disease hemochromatosis is caused by a mutation in the HFE gene that originated only recently and that is now most common in:

Patients in renal failure require dietary restriction of all the following nutrients except: