Experiments with pigs on a pellagra-producing diet

Abstract

WHILE the rat has been used in recent years with great success in nutritional studies, the results obtained have proved to be misleading in the investigation of pellagra. Goldberger and his co-workers discovered that rats ceased to thrive, became ill and developed a symmetrical dermatitis when deprived of the heat- stable portion of the B vitamin complex contained in yeast and concluded that this disease was probably the analogue of pellagra [Goldberger, Wheeler et al. 1926; Goldberger & Lillie, 1926]. Autoclaved dried yeast cured and prevented this rat disease and also canine "black tongue", the experimental disorder produced in dogs by feeding on diets consisting of 80 % maize with addition of ample protein in the form of purified casein. For this reason the aetiology of this canine disease was considered by Goldberger and his school to be the same as that of human pellagra [Goldberger, Wheeler et al. 1926; 1928, 1, 2; Goldberger & Wheeler, 1928]. Spies [1934] has since shown that human pellagra can be cured by autoclaved dried yeast.