Abstract
In a study of the secondary anemia of childhood, Happ and Evans 1 pointed out that 9 of their 10 patients had rickets, although the anemia could not be attributed to a lack of vitamin D, since it did not improve following the addition of cod liver oil. Since in human cases we seldom encounter uncomplicated avitaminosis, for the reason that diets that are deficient in one or 2 vitamins are generally deficient in other respects, particularly in minerals, we have found it of interest to determine if an anemia could be produced on the Steenbock-Black ration No. 2965 2 which is now extensively used by nutritional workers in vitamin research for the production of uncomplicated rickets in the rat.
For this study we have employed 39 animals, 30 on the Steen-bock and Black ricketic diet No. 2965 and 9 controls receiving the same diet supplemented with vitamin D by irradiating the ration 30 minutes with a mercury quartz vapor lamp.
Bleedings of most of the rats were performed twice weekly and of the others once weekly. Daily records were kept of body weight and food intake. At each bleeding hemoglobin and specific gravity determinations and erythrocyte counts were made. In Table I we present the hematopoietic function of a representative animal receiving the Steenbock and Black ration 2965 supplemented with vitamin D, showing anemia, as evidenced by the concentration of hemoglobin and erythrocyte counts. This is the typical picture that was obtained on the ricketic animals as judged by the line tests, 3 and the same blood picture was encountered on all the 9 control animals that showed normal calcification. We, therefore conclude that vitamin D deficiency has no influence on hematopoietic function.
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