Abstract
A NUMBER of biochemical tests have been designed and employed to aid in the overall assessment of the nutritional state of patients thought to be suffering from a vitamin deprivation. Many of these tests are cumbersome and poorly reproducible, and some lack specificity. In 1953 Horecker and Smyrniotis1 and Racker et al.2 independently discovered that transketolase, one of the enzymes of the hexose-monophosphate shunt, required thiamine pyrophosphate as cofactor. This enzyme, which has been found to exist in a number of mammalian tissues, acts as catalyst in the following steps: Both Brin and his associates3 and Bruns4 have demonstrated the . . .

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