Vitamin and C dissolve into the water when a vegetable is boiled, and are then lost when the water is discarded. The body's stores for different vitamins vary widely; vitamins A, D, and B are stored in significant amounts, mainly in the liver, and an adult's diet may be deficient in vitamins A and D for many months and B in some cases for years, before developing a deficiency condition. However, vitamin B (niacin and niacinamide) is not stored in significant amounts, so stores may last only a couple of weeks. For vitamin C, the first symptoms of scurvy in experimental
Vitamin K deficiency However, factor VII has the shortest half-life of all the factors carboxylated by vitamin K; therefore, when deficient, it is the PT that rises first, since the activated Factor VII is the first to "disappear." In later stages of deficiency, the other factors (which have longer half lives) are able to "catch up," and the PTT becomes elevated as well. Vitamin K-deficiency may occur by disturbed intestinal uptake (such as would occur in a bile duct obstruction), by therapeutic or accidental intake of a vitamin K-antagonist such as warfarin, or, very rarely, by nutritional vitamin K deficiency. As a result,