Deficiency disease

The salts have been used for centuries to produce brilliant and permanent blue colors in porcelain, glass, pottery, tiles, and enamels. It is the principal ingredient in Sevre s and Thenard s blue. A solution of the chloride is used as a sympathetic ink. Cobalt carefully used in the form of the chloride, sulfate, acetate, or nitrate has been found effective in correcting a certain mineral deficiency disease in animals. 

Deficiency Diseases. Not only did cereals make an important contribution to improving the general status of humankind, but they also were important dietary components of some groups of people who showed certain nutritional deficiencies. This observation led to the discovery of some of the vitamins. These deficiency diseases have been most prominently associated with use of rice, com, and wheat. 

Primary immunodeficiencies are uncommon, and may occur in 1 in 10,000 individuals (6). Many primary immunodeficiencies are hereditary and congenital, and first appear in infants and children. Primary immunodeficiencies are classified into four main groups (7) relating to the lymphocytes (B-ceUs, T-ceUs, or both), phagocytes, or the complement cascade (8). Primary deficiency diseases result from B-ceU defects in 50% of cases, from T-ceU defects in ca 10%, and from combined B- and T-ceU defects in ca 20%. Phagocytic disorders account for 18% and complement defects occur in 2% of all cases. 

The possibility that vitamins might have physiological functions beyond the prevention of deficiency diseases was first recognized in 1955 with the finding (8) that niacin can affect semm cholesterol levels in humans. An explosion of research (9—11) in the intervening years has been aimed at estabUshing optimal vitamin levels and anticipating the health consequences. 

Most of the thiamine sold worldwide is used for dietary supplements. Primary market areas include the following appHcations addition to feed formulations, eg, poultry, pigs, catde, and fish (see Feeds and feed additives) fortification of refined foods, eg, flours, rice, and cereal products and incorporation into multivitamins. Small amounts are used in medicine to treat deficiency diseases and other conditions, in agriculture as an additive to ferti1i2ers (qv), and in foods as flavorings. Generally for dry formulations, the less soluble, nonhygroscopic nitrate is preferred. Only the hydrochloride can be used for intravenous purposes. Coated thiamine is used where flavor is a factor. 

Silk fibroin and collagen illustrate the close linkage of protein stmcture and biologic function. Diseases of collagen mamration include Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and the vitamin C deficiency disease scurvy. 

In the vitamin D deficiency disease rickets, the bones of children are undermineralized as a result of poor absorption of calcium. Similar problems occur in adolescents who are deficient during their growth spurt. Osteomalacia in adults results from demineralization of bone in women who have little exposure to sunlight, often after several pregnancies. Although vitamin D is essential for prevention and treatment of osteomalacia in the elderly, there is little evidence that it is beneficial in treating osteoporosis. 

Although clinical deficiency disease is rare, there is evidence that a significant proportion of the population have marginal vitamin Bg status. Moderate deficiency results in abnormalities of tryptophan and methionine metabolism. Increased sensitivity to steroid hormone action may be important in the development of hormone-dependent cancer of the breast, uterus, and prostate, and vitamin Bg status may affect the prognosis. 

People whose diets are sparse in seafoods are susceptible to iodine-deficiency diseases, which are easily prevented by providing iodine in the diet. Iodized salt, which contains 0.1% KI, performs this function. 

Riboflavin (vitamin Eremothecium ashbyii Ashbya gossypii Treatment of vitamin B2 deficiency disease... 

Since erythrocytes, platelets, and leukocytes have received the greatest attention, the discussion that follows will be limited to these carriers. Fibroblasts [180] and hepatocytes [181] have been specifically used as viable sources to deliver missing enzymes in the management of enzyme-deficiency diseases, whereas islets are useful as a cellular transplant to produce insulin [182,183],... 

Diet plays an important role in most of the chronic diseases that are the largest causes of morbidity and mortality in the developed world. In a reductionist approach, scientists have often made the role of individual nutrients in the maintenance of health the focus of their research. This approach, and in particular the discovery of essential nutrients and their roles in disease prevention, has been instrumental in the elimination of deficiency diseases in large parts of the world. However, nutrients are not consumed in isolation, but as components of whole foods and in an infinite number of combinations. In addition, foods contain a myriad of chemicals (or non-nutrients) which either serve no role in human metabolism or for which the role has not yet been elucidated. This introduces a significant level of complexity, which may be difficult to unravel. 

Roedinger WEW The colonic epithelium in ulcerative colitis An energy deficient disease Lancet 1980 ii 712—715. 

The term vitamin is a misnomer, the name means vital amines, and while vitamins are essential for life they are not, as was originally supposed, amines. Most vitamins were discovered as a result of a deficiency disease produced by a restricted diet. Long voyages on sailing ships with a diet composed of ship s biscuit, dried beans, dried peas and salted meat produced scurvy. In the worst cases the whole crew were affected, but the ship s officers tended to be less severely affected. 

Nutritional deficiency diseases are relatively rare in the temperate zone. The etiology of numerous other clinical conditions involve vitamin deficiencies, due to faults in absorption, transfer, or utilization. Because of the central position of the vitamins as sources of coenzymes, such functional deficiencies are important in malabsorption, where the picture is often complicated by multiple deficiencies, in anemias where the defect is in general highly specific, and in many other diseases where the deficiency is secondary to other pathologic events, but nevertheless of grave consequences. 

P2a. Peck, S. M., Chargin, L., and Sobotka, H., Keratosis follicularis (Darier s disease). A vitamin A deficiency disease. Arch. Dermatol, and Syphilol. 43, 223-229 (1941). 

Casimir Funk had come from Poland to the Lister Institute in London, England to investigate the chemical nature of the substance in rice-polishings (rice bran) that cured or prevented polyneuritis in birds, a disease closely related to beri-beri in humans. His research in this subject coupled with his awareness of what were becoming known as diet-related diseases, the deficiency diseases, led to his review article of 1912 in which he coined the term, vitamine. Vitamine, to Funk, was actually a variety of chemical substances, organic amines, that acted selective-... 

Studies on the History of Rickets. I. Recognition of Rickets as a Deficiency Disease. Pharmacy in History, 16, 83-88 (1974)... 

Several examples of the binding of enzymes to poly(vinyl alcohol) are in the literature. These could possibly be used to treat enzyme deficiency diseases. In a recent example, trypsin was immobilized on poly(vinyl alcohol) fibers using maleic dialdehyde or bromal. While the reaction was more complete with bromal, the reaction with maleic dialdehyde gave a better support which showed decreasing activity with increasing enzyme content. The activity of the bromal activated system was independant of the enzyme content (52 ). Trypsin and papain were attached to poly(vinyl alcohol) by the reaction sequence shown in Equation 13. In this case, the crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol) is treated by the 1,3-dioxalone derivative and then converted to either the isothiocyanate or the diazonium salt for coupling with the enzyme. The bound enzymes showed significant, altho reduced, activity in each case (53). 

There was a time when students of nutrition were inclined to think that certain vitamins, e g., thiamine, vitamin A, and ascorbic acid, were the "important vitamins" and that others brought up the rear of the procession. From the standpoint of ease of discovery on the basis of deficiency disease, there is some justification in this view. 

It appears that the uncontrolled craving for alcohol in certain individuals is a nutritional deficiency disease. I have had intimate contact with several individuals (and less intimate contact with many more) who initially had this craving to an extreme degree, but who, by eating more wisely and taking nutritional supplements, have had their craving completely abolished so that now they behave as individuals who never were alcoholics they drink little or none as they wish. The fact that we have not yet devised a supplement which will be effective for all individuals is true, but it does not cancel the fact that some have had their difficulty removed. 

Fuge R. 1996. Geochemistry of iodine in relation to deficiency diseases. In Appleton ID, Fuge R, McCall GJH, eds. Environmental Geochemistry and Health. London Geological Society, 201-212. 

Diseases of people come in many flavors. There are infectious diseases (measles, mumps, influenza, AIDS,...), nutritional deficiency diseases (scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor,...), degenerative diseases (Alzheimer s disease, osteoporosis,...), cancer (of the lung, breast, prostate, liver,...), and single-gene inherited diseases or molecular diseases. In the last category, an important and instructive example is provided by sickle cell anemia. Let s consider this disease and begin to develop a sense of how we can understand it on the basis of what we now know about proteins. 

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