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The Relation of Vitamin C Deficiency to Nutritional Anemia¹

One Figure

Departments of Pediatrics and Chemistry, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois

1. When guinea pigs are fed a scorbutogenic diet with an addition of ascorbic acid for 50 days or more, a period longer than the life cycle of the erythrocyte, normal blood formation takes place.

2. When the ascorbic acid supplement is withdrawn, guinea pigs 4 months of age having a body weight of 450 gm. or more show a distinct reduction in the hemoglobin content of the blood within 20 days. A supplement of iron does not prevent this decline in hemoglobin. Younger animals, of 200 to 300 gm. body weight, may also become anemic. However, they very rarely do so because they usually succumb before a distinct anemia develops.

3. Guinea pigs made anemic by the withdrawal of ascorbic acid from their diet can be cured by administration of ascorbic acid in large amounts either orally or subcutaneously. This cure, however, is successful only in animals which have lost not more than about 25% of their body weight or one-third of their hemoglobin. The rise in hemoglobin induced by the ascorbic acid medication takes place much faster than the rise in body weight. This indicates that the anemia is cured long before the repair of the other body tissues is accomplished.

4. While these experiments give unquestionable evidence that ascorbic acid is a factor of deciding influence on hemoglobin formation in the guinea pig, they do not prove that ascorbic acid is the only active factor present in fresh green vegetables or in germinated oats as used in this experiment.

The problem of comparing the activity of ascorbic acid present in fresh green foods with the ascorbic acid in chemically pure form will be taken up in another paper.

Manuscript received 25 May 1939.

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