milk-alkali syndrome

If untreated, milk-alkali syndrome may lead to metastatic calcification and renal failure.

When taken with sodium bicarbonate, large doses of calcium from your diet, medications, or supplements can rarely cause a serious problem called milk-alkali syndrome.

Excess calcium from supplements, fortified food and high-calcium diets, can cause the milk-alkali syndrome, which has serious toxicity and can be fatal.

Similar extraskeletal calcifications are observed in some patients with hypercalcemic states, including patients with milk-alkali syndrome, sarcoidosis, primary hyperparathyroidism, and hypervitaminosis D.

Metastatic calcification involves a systemic calcium excess imbalance, which can be caused by hypercalcemia, renal failure, milk-alkali syndrome, lack or excess of other minerals, or other etiologies.

Excessive consumption of calcium carbonate antacids/dietary supplements (such as Tums) over a period of weeks or months can cause milk-alkali syndrome, with symptoms ranging from hypercalcemia to potentially fatal renal failure.

The name "milk-alkali syndrome" derives from when patients would take in excessive amounts of milk and antiacids to control their dyspepsia, leading to overingestion of two key ingredients that lead to the disorder, excess calcium and excess base.

In patients consuming a high-calcium or dairy-rich diet, calcium supplements, or calcium-containing antacids such as calcium carbonate (e.g., Tums), the use of sodium bicarbonate can cause milk-alkali syndrome, which can result in metastatic calcification, kidney stones, and kidney failure.

In medicine, milk-alkali syndrome, also called Burnett's syndrome in honor of Charles Hoyt Burnett (1913-1967), the American physician who first described it, is characterized by hypercalcemia caused by repeated ingestion of calcium and absorbable alkali (such as calcium carbonate, or milk and sodium bicarbonate).