Vitamin D in Tuberculosis.

Abstract

In 1926 in the course of our vitamin and calcification studies 1 , 2 , 3 the question arose repeatedly as to whether vitamins play an important rôle in the etiology and treatment of tuberculosis. Ultra-violet light within recent years has been found of value in the treatment of intestinal tuberculosis; heliotherapy has been used with success in other forms of tuberculosis; calcification often is found in healed tuberculous lesions. These considerations suggested a possible linkage between tuberculosis and the vitamin D content of the diet.

In the older literature, reviewed by Wells, DeWitt and Long, 4 cod liver oil is mentioned as having value in tuberculosis. The beneficial results, sometimes obtained, may not have been due to the fat but to the vitamins present in the oil. The failures in the past may have resulted from the inability of the patient to tolerate the large amounts of fat which accompany the potent material in the oil. Or the patient may have been given cod liver oil devoid of vitamins.

In the present study only such materials were used as were shown to be antiricketically potent by biological assay. We prepared irradiated cholesterol and tested its potency on ricketic rats according to a previously described technique. 1 , 2 We also used cod liver oil concentrate (Metz), obtained and tested as described in a preceding paper. 5 Also dried yeast powder (Fleischmann) was irradiated and biologically tested in an analogous fashion.

Subsequently, biologically assayed cod liver oil was added to the number of preparations studied. In the summer of 1926 we invited Dr. Bray and his staff, of the New York State Hospital for Incipient Tuberculosis at Ray Brook, to collaborate with us in that portion of the general vitamin-tuberculosis problem which pertained to human intestinal tuberculosis.