Hospital doctors and researchers from France's public health research body (Inserm) and Université Paris Cité analysed trends among nearly 900 children hospitalised with scurvy in France over a nine-year period, until November 2023.

The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, found the biggest increase in cases was among children aged four to 10, and largely those from low-income families.

"There would seem to be a link with poverty," said Ulrich Meinzer, the study’s coordinator and a paediatrician at Robert-Debré Hospital in Paris.

He underlined that 32.9 percent of the hospitalised children came from families receiving universal medical cover – an indicator of very low income.

"Nurses noted that some of the infected children had not eaten for several days," Meinzer told French news magazine Le Nouvel Obs.