EFFECT OF OILS CONTAINING UNSATURATED FATTY ACIDS ON PATIENTS WITH DERMATITIS

Abstract

For the past five or six years a number of investigators have been studying the effects of the feeding of oils containing highly unsaturated fatty acids (with a high iodine number) to patients with infantile eczema and chronic dermatitis (atopic eczema, generalized neurodermatitis). A. E. Hansen,¹who was originally responsible for the idea of feeding children oils containing unsaturated fatty acids for infantile eczema had his inspiration from the experiments of Burr and Burr,²who noted a cutaneous disease in rats having a deficiency in unsaturated fatty acids. Hansen found low iodine numbers for the serums of patients with infantile eczema and noted a rise of these iodine numbers coincident with clinical improvement which followed feeding of corn oil or linseed oil. He also noted that clinical improvement was accompanied or preceded by a return of the iodine number of the fatty acids in the serum from subnormal