A Guide to the Vitamins : Their Role in Health and Disease

This book represents a revised and up-dated text of an earlier book by the same author entitled 'The Vitamins in Health and Disease: a Modern Re-appraisal'. Throughout the history of mankind from primitive man to the present time, vitamin ddiciencies have been a major cause of death and disease. Pellagra, scurvy and beri-beri have decimated armies, ships' crews and even nations (Figure I). As late as 1925 the disease 'pernicious' anaemia caused by the ab­ sence of vitamin Bl2 within a person's body really lived up to its name. Although there were isolated instances of recognition of dietary deficien­ cies even a thousand years ago, the importance of dietary factors in the gene­ sis of these diseases was more widely recognized from the eighteenth century onwards and it was not until this century that the chemical structure of these factors was determined and the substances themselves synthesized. As the science of biochemistry has developed it has been found that the clinical manifestations of vitamin deficiency follow derangement of multiple metabolic functions. The majority of the vitamins in fact form specific co-en­ zymes in various chemical processes but at least one is converted within the body into a hormone. The commercial extraction and synthesis of the vitamins, which began mainly in the 1930S and 1940s, produced adequate quantities for a relief of vitamin detlciency diseases. The use of vitamins then became fashionable and dramatic cures were claimed for an ever increasing number of diseases Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 General Considerations....Pages 3-12 Causes of Vitamin Deficiency....Pages 13-21 Vitamin Adequacy of the Average Diet....Pages 23-29 Vitamin Problems in Underprivileged Countries....Pages 31-35 Front Matter....Pages 37-37 Vitamin A....Pages 39-49 Vitamin D....Pages 51-59 Vitamin E....Pages 61-65 Vitamin K....Pages 67-72 Thiamine....Pages 73-81 Riboflavine....Pages 83-91 Pyridoxine....Pages 93-101 Nicotinic Acid....Pages 103-110 Folic Acid....Pages 111-116 Vitamin B 12 ....Pages 117-124 Pantothenic Acid....Pages 125-130 Biotin....Pages 131-135 Vitamin C....Pages 137-144 Choline....Pages 145-146 Front Matter....Pages 147-147 Vitamin Assays....Pages 149-153 Examination for Vitamin Nutritional Status in the Human....Pages 155-167 Front Matter....Pages 147-147 Laboratory Tests for Deficiency....Pages 169-173 Vitamin Losses in Storage and Preparation of Food....Pages 175-186 Addition of Vitamins to Food....Pages 187-190 Vitamins in Animal Feeds....Pages 191-196 Back Matter....Pages 197-208 Good clean copy ,no page damage ,no writing or highlighting.