Effect of Hydroquinone in Vitamin A Deficiency.

Abstract

Since the discovery about 1913 that a lack of vitamin A in the diet would cause ophthalmia in rats, attempts have been made to show that this pathological condition might also be due to other factors than the absence of this vitamin. The so-called “salt ophthalmia” of McCullom, Simmonds and Becker 1 , 2 has been shown by McCullom, Simmonds and Becker 3 and Jones 4 to be due to an oxidative destruction of vitamin A in the diet by ferrous sulfate if the diets are not made up frequently. However, when the diet is made up daily, or every few days, no ophthalmia develops.

Recently Huston and Lightbody 5 have presented evidence to show that hydroquinone had a definite beneficial effect when used in a diet low or lacking in vitamin A. Huston, Lightbody and Ball⁶ also concluded that hydroquinone had a definite anti-oxygenic effect on the vitamin A of milk fat and cod liver oil. If these views are correct, a very important physiological rôle must be attributed to this phenol.

In order to test out the hypothesis of Huston and Lightbody, we fed 2 groups of rats on a vitamin A free diet consisting of extracted and heated casein, 18 gm., corn starch, 51 gm., crisco, 23 gm., salt mixture (Osborne and Mendel), 5 p., dried yeast, 3 gm., with 2 drops daily of a 5% solution of Vigantol to supply vitamin D. 0.05 and 0.1 gm. of hydroquinone per 100 gm. of the above diet were fed to the 2 groups of animals from the time of weaning. This diet was made up weekly. The 11 animals of these 2 groups all lost weight, developed ophthalmia and died.

When 1 part of a substance is included in 1000 parts of food the chances are very good that each animal will not receive a given amount of this small part each day. Hence a third group of rats were fed the above diet from the time of weaning and were given daily by mouth 5 drops of a solution of hydroquinone equivalent to 7 mg. of the phenol. The same results were obtained as described above. 3 animals of this group were cured of ophthalmia by cod liver oil.