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Effects on the Albino Mouse of Feeding Diets Very Deficient in Each of Several Vitamin B Factors

(Thiamine, Riboflavin, Pyridoxine and Pantothenic Acid)¹

One Figure

Departments of Physiological Chemistry and Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Using a diet in which the B factors were supplied as pure compounds, a deficiency of each of four of the factors (thiamine, riboflavin, pyridoxine and pantothenic acid) in the albino mouse has been studied.

When thiamine was omitted from the diet the animals lived from 19 to 31 days. They did not show symptoms characteristic of this deficiency as are seen in the rat. In less acute vitamin B₁ deficiency the classical polyneuritic symptoms have been observed in this laboratory.

Mice on the riboflavin-deficient diet lived from 34 to 202 days. Many of them developed characteristic dermatitis about the head and especially on the ears. In some cases nearly the entire ear sloughed off.

No specific symptoms or lesions (other than poor growth and death) resulted from the omission of pyridoxine from the diet. The animals lived from 28 to 67 days. Nearly all of the mice on this diet excreted in the urine a characteristic brownish-yellow pigment.

The first death on the diet lacking in pantothenic acid occurred on the 67th day and there was a survival of 21% when the experiment was discontinued (205 days). A loss of hair was the most outstanding sign of deficiency in these animals. In addition, a number of the mice developed some of the following signs: a profound spasticity of the extremities, acute arching of the spine, awkward gait, dryness of the skin with scaly desquamation, and hyperemia and edema of the eyelids.

Manuscript received 28 August 1944.