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Lack of Hæmatopoietic Potency of Liver of Mice fed on a Meat Diet

Abstract

RECENTLY, Adler1 reported that mice fed on a diet composed of meat only develop an anæmia which is generally fatal but is cured by beef liver. Ilan, Kende and Guggenheim2 have found that treatment of mice while subsisting on the meat diet with paraaminobenzoic acid, folic acid, vitamin B12, liver extract, pyridoxine, iron, vitamin A, antibiotics (per os) or a combination of some of these substances neither prevents the anæmia nor the mortality nor does it improve growth. Some of these substances have, however, a slight effect in preventing anæmia. It could furthermore be shown that livers of mice suffering from ‘meat anæmia’, contained much more vitamin B12 than those of non-anæmia controls. It has been assumed that an essential hæmatopoietic factor, which is not vitamin B12, folic acid or any other known hæmatopoietic factor, is absent from beef muscle ; another possibility is the presence in beef muscle of an inhibitor of hæmatopoiesis.

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References

  1. Adler, S., Bull. Res. Counc. Israel, 7, E, 9 (1958).

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  2. Ilan, J., Kende, M., and Guggenheim, K., Blood (in the press).

  3. Wintrobe, M. M., “Clinical Hematology”, fourth ed., 446 (Lea and Febiger, Philadelphia, 1951).

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ILAN, J., GUGGENHEIM, K. Lack of Hæmatopoietic Potency of Liver of Mice fed on a Meat Diet. Nature 187, 698–699 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/187698b0

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