Abstract
That pellagra is an avitaminosis, produced by a deficiency of a dietary factor, associated with the vitamin B complex, is now generally recognized. Recently, however, Bliss 1 has advanced the theory that pellagra is an iron deficiency disease and claims that the curative agent of the vitamin-containing foods employed by Gold-berger and other investigators is not the “so-called vitamin G” but iron. Although it has not yet been conclusively established whether the pellagra-like disease in the rat is the analogue of human pellagra or not, we trust that the character of the results of our studies on the hematopoietic function in vitamin G deficiency in the rat may be of interest to investigators in this field.
The dietary regime for the production of vitamin G deficiency has been described elsewhere. 2 , 3 The optimum ration for the production of dermatitis was found to be one deficient in the vitamin B complex, supplemented by a daily allowance of 500 mg. of rice polishings, and irradiated for 10 hours, in order to insure the destruction of the greater portion of vitamin G. 4 We have found no specific relation between failure in growth and the incidence of pellagra-like symptoms in the rat, the dermatitis being prevalent in some animals that made normal growth and absent in others that entirely failed in growth and finally collapsed following great losses of weight. The latter phenomenon we encountered most frequently when our basal diet was supplemented with alcoholic extracts from whole wheat, as a source of vitamin B. We, therefore, suggested that the antidermatitis factor is a syndrome distinct from the growth-promoting substance, both of which are associated with “so-called vitamin G.” 5
A total of 44 animals was employed for this study.
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