Scurvy Returns: A Modern Diagnostic Puzzle After Weight-Loss Surgery

Scurvy, the ancient disease of long-haul sailors and lime-juice-deprived crews, was supposed to be a historical curiosity. Yet a clinical vignette published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine by Shruti Mavuri and Eric Kutscher of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reminds the medical world that vitamin C deficiency has not disappeared. It has simply changed address. Their report describes an atypical presentation of scurvy in a patient who had undergone bariatric surgery, a scenario the authors frame as a genuine diagnostic challenge. The case is a small publication, but it carries a large warning for clinicians: in the era of rapidly expanding metabolic surgery, one of medicine’s oldest deficiency diseases is quietly re-emerging in a new and easily missed patient population.

The biology behind scurvy explains why its symptoms can be so dramatic and so deceptive at the same time. Ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, is an essential cofactor for the enzymes that hydroxylate proline and lysine residues in collagen, the structural protein that gives connective tissue its tensile strength. Classic work by Murad and colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 and cited in the vignette, demonstrated that ascorbic acid directly regulates collagen synthesis. Without it, fibroblasts produce collagen that cannot be properly cross-linked, and the scaffolding of blood vessels, skin, gums, and wound granulation tissue begins to fail. Later research by Boyera and colleagues confirmed that vitamin C and its derivatives stimulate collagen synthesis and cross-linking in normal human fibroblasts, underlining how central this single micronutrient is to tissue integrity.

That molecular failure produces the textbook picture of scurvy: perifollicular hemorrhages, corkscrew hairs, bleeding gums, poor wound healing, joint pain, and fatigue. But the vignette’s central point is that the disease does not always read from the textbook. When scurvy presents atypically, as it did in this post-bariatric patient, the cutaneous and systemic findings can be subtle, scattered, or mistaken for other dermatologic and hematologic conditions. The authors, who note that the patient consented to the sharing of the case and clinical images, position the report explicitly as a diagnostic challenge, a phrase that captures the core problem: clinicians rarely have scurvy high on their differential in a well-nourished-looking modern patient, and bariatric surgery patients often do not look malnourished at all.

Bariatric surgery creates the perfect physiological conditions for this kind of stealth deficiency. Procedures such as sleeve gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass fundamentally restructure the gastrointestinal tract, altering gastric acid production, intestinal transit, nutrient mixing, and the length and function of absorbing surfaces. A review by Steenackers and colleagues in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, also cited in the report, details the extensive adaptations in gastrointestinal physiology after these operations. On top of the anatomical changes, patients frequently experience changes in taste, smell, and appetite after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, as documented by Graham and colleagues in Obesity Surgery, which can shift dietary patterns away from the fresh fruits and vegetables that supply most dietary vitamin C. Vitamin C is also heat-labile, so diets heavy in cooked or processed foods deliver less of it even when overall intake appears adequate.

The scale of the problem is documented in the wider literature the authors draw upon. A 2024 meta-analysis by Chen and colleagues in Langenbecks Archives of Surgery examined the long-term prevalence of vitamin deficiencies after bariatric surgery, confirming that micronutrient shortfalls persist for years after the operation, not merely in the immediate postoperative period. Guidelines from Mechanick and colleagues, published as the 2019 update of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Perioperative Nutrition, Metabolic, and Nonsurgical Support of Patients Undergoing Bariatric Procedures, recommend structured supplementation and monitoring. Yet studies such as that by Donadelli and colleagues in Nutrition have shown that hypovitaminosis occurs even in patients taking daily vitamin supplementation, suggesting that adherence, formulation, and absorption all conspire against simple prevention. Vitamin C, notably, is not always among the micronutrients routinely emphasized in postoperative regimens, which tend to focus on iron, calcium, vitamin D, and B12.

Perhaps the most striking piece of evidence cited in the vignette comes from a 2023 study by Parrott and colleagues in Obesity Surgery, which used machine learning models to predict vitamin C deficiency in patients with metabolic and bariatric surgery. The very existence of such a study signals how significant the problem has become: researchers are now deploying predictive algorithms to identify which surgical patients are silently running low on ascorbic acid. The title of that paper, What We Are Missing, doubles as an indictment of current clinical practice. Deficiency can develop and progress while patients are technically compliant with their prescribed multivitamins, because standard bariatric supplements may not contain sufficient vitamin C to compensate for altered intake and absorption.

Diagnosing scurvy remains stubbornly low-tech in an age of high-tech medicine. Plasma ascorbic acid levels can be measured, but the test is not universally available, results can take time, and clinicians must first think to order it. The diagnosis is often made clinically, on the basis of characteristic skin findings, dietary history, and a rapid response to vitamin C repletion. That dependence on clinical suspicion is precisely what makes atypical presentations dangerous. A rash on the legs of a post-bariatric patient might be attributed to vasculitis, a medication reaction, thrombocytopenia, or any number of more familiar entities before anyone asks the deceptively simple question: what does this person actually eat? The Mount Sinai authors’ framing of the case as a diagnostic challenge reflects this reality, and their vignette is best understood as an educational tool for the internal medicine and primary care audiences of the journal.

The chemistry of vitamin C adds another layer to the story. Beyond its role in collagen maturation, ascorbic acid is a potent biological antioxidant, and Njus and colleagues, writing in Free Radical Biology and Medicine in 2020, have detailed the chemistry underlying those antioxidant properties. Vitamin C also potentiates nitric oxide synthesis in endothelial cells, as Heller and colleagues demonstrated in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, linking the vitamin to vascular tone and endothelial health. Nitric oxide in turn intersects with vascular endothelial growth factor signaling, a relationship explored by Dulak and Józkowicz in Antioxidants and Redox Signaling. These interconnected pathways help explain why severe deficiency produces not just fragile skin but bleeding, poor perfusion, fatigue, and impaired wound repair throughout the body, and why repletion can produce such rapid clinical improvement.

The broader context is a global rise in bariatric and metabolic surgery, driven by the escalating prevalence of obesity and its complications. Each year, hundreds of thousands of patients undergo procedures that permanently alter their nutritional physiology, and they carry those alterations for life. A 2023 review by Gandhi and colleagues in the journal Diseases, titled Scurvy: Rediscovering a Forgotten Disease, catalogued the resurgence of the condition in modern populations, including patients with restricted diets, alcohol use disorder, and malabsorptive surgery. The pattern is consistent: scurvy today is overwhelmingly a disease of medical and social complexity, not of maritime deprivation, and it surfaces in populations that clinicians do not instinctively associate with classical malnutrition.

The takeaway from the Mount Sinai vignette is both humble and actionable. Scurvy is preventable with a few milligrams of vitamin C a day, easily treated with oral repletion, and completely reversible in its early stages, yet it can still evade diagnosis in a modern hospital because nobody thinks of it. For the growing population of bariatric surgery patients, the case argues for vigilance: routine assessment of dietary vitamin C intake, awareness that standard supplements may not suffice, and a low threshold to consider deficiency when unexplained skin findings, bleeding, or musculoskeletal pain appear. For clinicians everywhere, it is a reminder that ancient diseases do not vanish; they adapt. As Mavuri and Kutscher’s report makes clear, the patient with a mysterious rash in the era of metabolic surgery may be carrying a diagnosis that is centuries old, waiting for someone to ask the right question about a piece of fruit.

Subject of Research: Atypical scurvy caused by vitamin C deficiency in a patient after bariatric surgery

Article Title: Atypical Presentation of Scurvy in a Post-Bariatric Surgery Patient: A Diagnostic Challenge

Article References: Mavuri, S., & Kutscher, E. (2026). Atypical Presentation of Scurvy in a Post-Bariatric Surgery Patient: A Diagnostic Challenge. Journal of General Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-026-10870-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11606-026-10870-0

Keywords: scurvy, vitamin C deficiency, bariatric surgery, collagen synthesis, nutritional deficiency, diagnostic challenge, rash, malabsorption, gastric bypass, internal medicine, micronutrients, clinical vignette