Clinical Biochemistry of Domestic Animals (Sixth Edition) - UMK ...

Chapter 23
Vitamins
Robert B. Rucker
Department of Nutrition
College of Agriculture and Environmental
Sciences
University of California, Davis
Davis, California
James Morris
Department of Molecular Bioscience
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of California, Davis
Davis, California
Andrea J. Fascetti
Department of Molecular Bioscience
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of California, Davis
Davis, California
I. INTRODUCTION AND BRIEF HISTORY
II. DEFINITION, GENERAL PROPERTIES, AND
OVERVIEW OF FUNCTIONS
III. FAT-SOLUBLE VITAMINS
A. Vitamin A
B. Vitamin D
C. Vitamin E
D. Vitamin K
IV. WATER-SOLUBLE VITAMINS
A. Vitamins Important to Redox: Ascorbic Acid, Niacin,
and Riboflavin
B. Vitamins Directed at Specific Features of
Carbohydrate, Protein, or Lipid Metabolism: Thiamin,
Pyridoxine, and Pantothenic Acid
C. Vitamins Involved in Single-Carbon Metabolism:
Biotin, Folic Acid, and B 12
V. VITAMIN-LIKE COMPOUNDS
A. Lipotropic Factors
B. Other Vitamin-Like Compounds
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
REFERENCES
I . INTRODUCTION AND BRIEF HISTORY
The concept that food components are linked to tissue
growth and repair was evident in the writings of Greek
philosophers as early as the fifth century B.C. In human
medicine, nutrition is a topic found in the Hippocratic
collection. The first disease to be recognized as nutrition
related may have been night blindness. An ancient
Egyptian medical text, the Papyrusebers (written about
1550–1570 B.C .), prescribed “ beef liver, roasted, squeezed,
placed against the eye ” for various eye diseases, including
night blindness. In China, liver applied topically to the eye
was also used as a treatment for night blindness.
By the mid-1700s, the curative effects of certain foods
had been linked to a number of diseases. James Lynn, a
physician in England, assembled his classic treatise that
fresh fruits and vegetables seemed effective in curing
scurvy. By the 1800s, the association of corn to pellagra
(niacin deficiency) was made; by the 1900s, Eijkman, a
Dutch physician working in Java, reported that consumption
of polished rice was related to polyneuritis, associated
with the nutrition disease beriberi. These studies are
also noteworthy because they are among the first to utilize
experimental animals to produce a vitamin deficiency
in a controlled setting. However, the concept that specific
diseases could be caused by the lack of a dietary component
did not evolve until the beginning of the 20th century.
Because of the success of Pasteur and the “ germ theory, ”
many diseases now recognized as nutritional in origin were
initially attributed to infectious agents. It was widely held
that only the gross constituents of the diet (i.e., carbohydrates,
protein, fat, and minerals) were needed for complete
nourishment. As F. G. Hopkins, one of the founders of
nutrition as a science, noted in his 1929 Nobel lecture, “ the
quantitative character of the data obtained and the attractive
circumstance that such data appeared to supply . . .
induced a feeling that knowledge concerning these needs
had become highly adequate and was approximating even
to finality . . . and a feeling that knowledge concerning
nutrition was adequate and complete ” ( Hopkins, 1930 ) .
Nevertheless, the concept that a small amount of certain
factors seemed necessary for optimal growth and development
soon evolved ( Goldblith and Joslyn, 1964 ) .
The pursuit to define the nature of vitamins was first
directed at lipid substances that were demonstrated to
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