The Present Status of Vitamin A

A year ago in Vitamin News we discussed the known effects of Vitamin A deficiency, its sources, and some of the therapeutic uses of the concentrate.

The experience of the year as regards our tablet of Vitamin A concentrate indicates that it may be found useful in treating the following conditions:

1. Lack of appetite in undernourished children. (One tablet a day, with one “Catalyn” tablet).
2. Lowered resistance of the epithelium to bacterial invasion and epithelial irritability. This includes such otherwise diverse conditions as susceptibility to colds, gastritis, cystitis, and nephritis. Not but what there are other factors causing these diseases, but when Vitamin A deficiency is present they tend to persist and are not as amenable to the heretofore conventional therapeutic measures. Albuminuria without apparent cause, especially in children, is often controllable with one tablet a day of Vitamin A. Acute cystitis is often immediately controlled, so are certain types of gastritis.
3. Constipation. Certain individuals have found that an occasional Vitamin A tablet maintains a normal bowel function. As yet we have no theory to offer, except that Vitamin A is known to be essential to liver function. Vitamins B, C and F are known to sometimes have this effect also.
4. Dropsy, where there is present liver dysfunction. The fact must be recalled also that Vitamin A is essential to kidney function as well as of the liver, and its value in this situation may be attributable to the beneficial action on each organ.
5. Renal calculi. Stones or gravel in the kidney or bladder can be considered a definite result of Vitamin A deficiency. The accompanying susceptibility to infection because of the same deficiency is a serious matter. The calculi tend to become abscessed, and the only rational treatment (besides surgical removal) is a high vitamin diet and vitamin concentrates. Two tablets each of Vitamin A and “Catalyn” produce definite results. Many persons with renal calculi have a mottled ruddy complexion–sometimes a “whisky nose”–which begins to clear up in a few days under the above treatment. The actual dissolution of the calculi, however, is a slow matter. They become sharper (star shaped) as they dissolve, and may cause trouble at any time. The value of Vitamin A to allay the irritability of the urinary system is here most apparent.

Vitamin A is formed in the body from carotene, the coloring material in butter, yellow vegetables and cereals. It is also obtained from eggs, liver, carrots and the green leaf vegetables.

CAROTENE IN A PURIFIED FORM HAS BEEN WIDELY SOLD AS VITAMIN A. THIS SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS AN EFFECTIVE SOURCE OF THIS VITAMIN. It is our opinion that most persons who have a deficiency of Vitamin A have for some reason lost their ability to convert the carotene into the vitamin. McCollum has stated that in certain countries where the diet was confined to vegetables high in carotene (squash as an example), some persons (presumably those who had lost the conversion power) became yellow in color, simulating jaundice, differing only in that the whites of the eyes were not affected.

Sherman and Smith in The Vitamins say that an alcoholic extract of carrot was known to protect rats from xerophthalmia where pure carotene prepared from carrot was without effect (page 244). This indicates that some rats also can fail to be able to make the conversion.

It is our prediction that some other dietary factor as yet unidentified will be found to be necessary for this conversion. Meanwhile we offer our concentrate of Vitamin A to those who are sufficiently critical to expect a definite clinical result in each case where its use is indicated.

We believe that a serious mistake has been made in the acceptance by the U. S. Pharmacopeia of carotene as a unitary standard of Vitamin A. It is a premature decision to accept carotene as a measure of what the as yet unknown vitamin will accomplish. It is a justification of our attitude of record to refrain from making the attempt to offer our customers a unit specification of vitamin content that fails to take into account clinical performance, but is based on some other unrelated means of standardisation.

We prefer to stake our reputation on our care in the selection of raw materials, and on our care in so processing these materials as to insure a potent final product. We have as yet to receive a complaint from any physician that he failed to get results in a case that according to his experience should have responded. No pharmaceutical product should be purchased without taking into account the reputation of the manufacturer, and in the history of all food products no better standard has been developed.