Influence of Rice and Purified Diets upon Cardiac Behavior of Thiamine Deficient Rats

Abstract

Summary

Cardiac damage was produced in rats by a severe chronic thiamine deficiency. Rats fed a natural polished rice diet and/or a purified diet with thiamine added to approximate that naturally present in rice had less severe physiologic and pathologic changes than rats fed a thiamine free purified diet. The results of this experiment indicate that the protection shown by the rice diet and a purified diet with thiamine approximately equal to that of the rice diet was due to the trace of thiamine and not to some unknown substance or property in rice.