Pellagra results from a niacin and/or tryptophan deficient diet which
produces psychosis and dementia, among other symptoms. Niacin, known as
vitamin B3, is a water-soluble, vitamin of the B complex group of
vitamins.
The earliest description of pellagra was that of the
Spanish physician Don Gaspar Casal in 1763.Casal recorded all the
clinical characteristics and ascribed the disease to the unbalanced
diets, based on maize, of poor peasants in the Asturia region of Spain.
The next description of the disease came from Italy in 1771 when
pellagra was given its name, meaning "rough skin".
Pellagra
mostly found in parts of India, China, and Africa where corn
or maize as a staple food. The characteristic manifestations appear
as dermatitis, diarrhea and dementia ("the three Ds") and can lead to
death (the fourth D).
Causes of pellagra can be
divided into primary and secondary. Primary pellagra is
due to dietary deficiency. High leucine content in
corn/maize prevents conversion of tryptophan to niacin, leading
to deficiency of niacin. Secondary pellagra is due to defective
absorption or metabolism of niacin/tryptophan.
Early
neurological symptoms associated with pellagra include anxiety,
depression, and fatigue; later symptoms include apathy, headache,
dizziness, irritability and tremors. In early cases the
manifestations are psychoneurotic; later, lesions affect the
nerves. As the disease advances, patients become confused, disoriented,
and delirious, then comatose and stuporous, and finally die.
Mental aberrations may pass to dementia: about 4-10 % of chronic pellagra patients developmental symptoms.
In the western world, it is almost eradicated due to fortification of flour with niacin.
Vitamins are defined as a group of complex organic compounds present in minute amounts in natural foodstuff that are essential to normal metabolism and lack of which in the diet causes deficiency diseases. Vitamins are required in trace amounts (micrograms to milligrams per day) in the diet for health, growth and reproduction.
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