Niacin: Antipellagra Factor, Hypocholesterolemic Agent

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Niacin, the antipellagra factor, which was found recently to be a hypocholesterolemic agent, serves well as a prototype of the trends in nutrition research in the present century. When Joseph Goldberger initiated his studies of the etiology of pellagra in 1914,1-3the concept that disease could be due to deficiency of a nutritional factor was relatively new and had not gained wide acceptance. His brilliant epidemiological studies, culminating in the experimental production of pellagra in a group of prisoners by dietary restriction, proved that pellagra was due to nutritional deficiency.4-6Search for the missing dietary factor required more than 20 years. Goldberger7participated in this search and suggested at one time that amino acid deficiency might be involved but later concluded that vitamin deficiency was probably responsible. Nutrition research during the 25 years following Goldberger's early work was directed primarily toward determination of essential dietary substances for

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: