Word: vitamine
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...began to change their feeding habits. With a good deal of difficulty, says Moncrieff, they learned to digest wool, have not yet completely adapted themselves to their unnatural diet. Researchers have proved that moth larvae grow faster when fed on fish meal or casein, and that unless they get vitamin B they never reach maturity. Vitamin B, plentiful in dirty clothes, is what a moth is after when he chews up a gravy spot...
...researchers noted that certain infections (e.g., the minute protozoa which cause sleeping sickness) thrive in a well-fed patient, but languish where some supposedly vital food factor is missing. Rats whose diet was lacking in the vitamin B complex survived sleeping sickness better than better-fed rodents. Ill-fed rats infested with an intestinal parasite were not helped by a pantothenic acid (vitamin) preparation in their diet; instead, the parasites flourished on it. So did the parasites in chickens infected with bird malaria...
...humans, the most baffling virus is that of poliomyelitis. It has been noted for years that the disease seems to attack better-nourished children. In mice experiments, if the animals' diet was deficient in thiamin (vitamin B1), the incubation period was prolonged, and the paralysis and mortality rates were cut down. It was also found that if thiamin was added to the diet of infected animals, the polio often developed quickly into paralysis. But the picture was not all dark. In many cases, vitamins proved to be a shield against disease. One dramatic example: pigeons deprived of vitamin...
Twelve babies, all three pounds or less at birth, were given vitamin E, beginning when they were about a week old. None of them has developed R.L.F. Of 17 others studied who did not get vitamin E, three began to show the early symptoms of the disease; so did four others who had weighed between three and four pounds. When vitamin A and iron were stopped, and vitamin E given to these seven, the disease was checked in four cases. This, cautioned Dr. William Owens, is "very encouraging, but not scientifically definite...
...recent paper the Owenses warn: "Vitamin E supplements are of no value if not started...before the baby is six weeks of age, since by that time irreversible retinal changes have occurred." Thus in the case of the Hoffmann twins, it apparently was several months too late for vitamin E treatment when the babies were brought to New York. At Johns Hopkins, every baby under three pounds now gets alpha tocopherol when a week old, and until it passes the 5½-pound mark...