Nutritional Aspects of Pyrldoxal as a Coenzyme

Polycythaemia in Pyridoxin Deficiency in the Rat

“…T h e growth behaviour and clinical condition of the animals have been described in detail elsewhere (Ramalingaswami & Sinclair, 1953). It may be briefly mentioned here that the deficient animals showed retardation of growth and symmetrical skin lesions characteristic of pyridoxin deficiency whereas the control animals increased in weight and remained free from signs.…”

“…We are tempted to speculate that it may be due to a defect in the formation of the erythrocyte stroma in the absence of pyridoxin. It is well known that pyridoxin is intimately connected with the metabolism of proteins and of essential unsaturated fatty acids (Snell, 1953;Sherman, 1950;Sinclair, 1952Sinclair, , 1953. The stroma of the mammalian erythrocyte has been found to be a protein-lipid complex ( (1953) it appears that the stromal proteins are in a dynamic state undergoing characteristic changes during the development of anaemia.…”

Proceedings of the Physiological Society

“…Laboratory of Human Nutrition, University of Oxford We have previously suggested that pyridoxal phosphate is a coenzyme of histaminase, and it was therefore possible that the skin lesions of deficiency of vitamin B6 might be related to excessive histamine (Sinclair, 1952). This hypothesis was abandoned when we found the skin histamine was not increased (Sinclair, 1953). In this work we used pair-fed rats, but since the control animals are much larger than the deficient ones it was possible that the lowered histamine might be related to the size of the animal.…”