VITAMIN C IN RELATION TO EXPERIMENTAL POLIOMYELITIS

Abstract

In the experiments reported in the present communication it was found that vitamin C, both natural and synthetic preparations, had no effect on the course of experimental poliomyelitis induced by nasal instillation of the virus. The objection cannot be raised that too large an amount of virus was used, since recent studies (3) on the fate of the nasally instilled virus indicated that all but an undetectable amount of it is swallowed and disappears from the nasal mucosa within 3 hours or less, and that none is demonstrable in the central nervous system before the 3rd day. Vitamin C administration was begun immediately after the instillation of virus and if it were capable of exerting any effect on the virus or the tissues it could have done so even before multiplication of virus had begun. Monkeys whose store of vitamin C was depleted reacted in the same way as those receiving an adequate diet. There is no apparent explanation for the difference between these results and those reported earlier by Jungeblut (1,2). During the present investigation it was found that monkeys on a scorbutic diet died of spontaneous acute infections, chiefly pneumonia and enterocolitis, while their mates receiving an adequate diet remained well. The surviving monkeys on the scorbutic diet developed the osseous and other changes of human scurvy, and the vitamin C used in this study was shown to produce healing and calcification in the bones as well as to check the edema and hemorrhagic diathesis.