Carotene and vitamin A : the anti-infective action of carotene / H.N. Green and E. Mellanby.

  • Green, H. N. (Harry Norman)
Date:
[1930?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Carotene and vitamin A : the anti-infective action of carotene / H.N. Green and E. Mellanby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/10
    ST CAROTENE AND VITAMIN A ; THE ANTI-INFECTIVE ACTION OF CAROTENE. H. N. GREEN and E. MELLANBY. From the Department of Pharmacology, University of Sheffield. Received for publication January 20th, 1930. Rats fed on a diet devoid of vitamin A but complete, so far as is known, in other dietetic units ultimately develop multiple infective lesions and die (Green and Mellanby, 1928). We have previously dealt with this phenomenon, and also attempted to see whether the experimental observation in animals had any clinical significance by giving large amounts of vitamin A for therapeutic purposes to a small number of patients suffering from puerperal septicaemia (Mellanby and Green, 1929). In this report we wish to deal with a specific problem, namely, as to whether carotene has the characteristic anti-infective action previously shown to be possessed by vitamin A. The prolonged discussion on the relation between the carotenoid pigments and vitamin A has now been placed on a more definite footing by the work of Euler, Euler and Hellstrom (1928), who have shown that samples of crystalline carotene, presumably pure, possess growth-promoting properties similar to those of vitamin A. Many other carotenoid pigments were tested, but only one, a-dihydrocrocetin, was found to be active (Euler, Euler and Karrer, 1929). The literature of the sequence of events which at one time and another has led to a denial of this relationship is surveyed in two recent papers—Collinson, Hume, Smedley-Maclean and Smith (1929), and Moore (1929)—and therefore need not be further discussed here. The present position, however, is still a little obscure since, on the one hand, Duliere, Morton and Drummond (1929), using a sample of carotene of a high degree of purity, found it inactive. At present it is suggested that their use of a fat-free basal diet may explain the discrepancy, for it is possible that carotene is only absorbed in the presence of fat. On the other hand, the work of Collinson et al. (1929) and Moore (1929) indicates that increasingly pure samples of carotene do not possess, at any rate, less ‘‘ vitamin A ” activity. It is clear that, if carotene has the properties usually associated with vitamin A, and even if carotene is the actual compound responsible for the activity of substances such as green and other vegetables, butter and egg yolk, as it might well be, it is not the same substance as vitamin A in liver fats. The carotene content of cod or mammalian liver fat can only at the best be very small, yet preparations from these substances can be obtained which have as much or even more vitamin A activity than crystalline carotene. Liver oils containing vitamin A give with SbCls a transient blue colour with an absorption