Further Experiments on Nutritional Achromotrichia in Rats and Mice

Abstract

From the results of previous experiments it has been concluded that “concentrates of pantothenic acid, with a purification up to 40 to 50%, appear to contain one factor but not the only factor concerned in the cure of nutritional achromotrichia in rats.” 1

Later, it became evident that this factor, which proved to be heat labile in alkaline solution, is identical with pantothenic acid. 2 In a group of rats kept on a diet free from pantothenic acid, administration of daily doses of from 75 to 100 μg of synthetic pantothenic acidf brought about cure of the nutritional achromotrichia in from 5 to 7 weeks. 2 In some rats the cure was slower and in a few it was never quite complete.

These experiments were repeated with black mice‡ kept under similar nutritional conditions. The diet used was particularly conducive 3 to the production of acrodynia in rats. It consisted of 18 parts of purified casein,§ 10 of dried heated egg white, 58 of sucrose, 8 of melted butter fat, 2 of cod liver oil and 4 of salt mixture. Raw egg white was heated over a steam bath for 3 hours in order to destroy the injurious effect (“egg white injury” 4 ) it has on animals. The diet fed both to the rats and the mice was supplemented with 20 μg each of thiamin chloride, pyridoxine and riboflavin.

In from 3 to 5 weeks, apart from the skin lesions, the fur of the mice became gray or brownish, similar in color to the fur of wild house mice or more silvery. Daily doses of from 50 to 100 μg of calcium pantothenate (synthetic, Merck) produced quick and definite effect on the depigmentation of the fur, with practical cure in from 3 to 5 weeks. The therapeutic effect on the cutaneous manifestations was even more rapid. 5 These lesions were similar to those described in rats as Type II 6 and to those recently observed in mice under similar conditions by Norris and Hauschildt. 7