Relationship of Pantothenic Acid and Inositol to Alopecia in Mice

Abstract

It has recently been shown in two laboratories 1 , 2 that mice become hairless over large areas of the body when they are maintained on a purified diet. It has also been shown 3 , 4 that inositol is a curative agent for the alopecia. With the isolation and identification of the anti-alopecia factor, it became of interest to study pantothenic acid deficiency in the presence of all other known essentials and also to determine if there were other unknown vitamins required by mice. It was observed that even in the presence of inositol, but in the absence of pantothenic acid, alopecia developed. The present report deals with alopecia which results from a lack of pantothenic acid and with that which results from a lack of inositol.

A highly purified basal diet which contained no unknown water-soluble constituents was prepared as previously described. 5 Pantothenic acid in the form of d,l sodium pantothenate 6 and inositol were added in the amounts desired for various experiments. Since only one optical isomer of pantothenic acid is biologically active, the levels of racemic acid quoted throughout this paper must be divided by two in order to obtain the quantity of active material which the animals received. General care of the mice was similar to that previously described. 1