Signs and symptoms of Vitamin E deficiency

Vitamin E deficiency is extremely rare in humans as it is unlikely caused by a diet consisting of low vitamin E. Vitamin E deficiency occurs only as a result of genetic abnormalities in α–tocopherol transfer protein, as a result of various fat malabsorption syndromes, or as a result of protein-energy malnutrition.

Vitamin E deficiency signs include ataxia, retinopathy, peripheral neuropathy, skeletal myopathy, and immune response impairment. Crohn’s disease and cystic fibrosis patients require water-soluble vitamin E due to their inability to secrete bile.

The primary human vitamin E deficiency symptom is a peripheral neuropathy characterized by the degeneration of the large-caliber axons in the sensory neurons.

Vitamin E deficiency also causes ataxia and vitamin E deficiency (AVED), an inherited disorder, where the liver’s α-tocopherol transfer protein (α-TTP) is defective or absent. The lack of functional a-TTP results in the rapid depletion of plasma a-tocopherol, thereby demonstrating that a-TTP is needed to maintain plasma a-tocopherol concentrations. AVED patients suffer from nerve damage and lose the ability to walk.

As the vitamin E deficiency continues over time, the neurologic defects become so severe such that they that result in ataxia. Other symptoms include increased erythrocyte fragility, and increased ethane and pentane production.
Signs and symptoms of Vitamin E deficiency

Ariboflavinosis

Riboflavin is essential in the diet and the human body is unable to synthesize this vitamin. It is a water-soluble, photosensitive, crystalline pigment the present of which can be determined by fluorometric as well as micro-biological and absorptive-photometrical methods.

Riboflavin is not stored in the body, requiring people to replenish supply daily from the diet. Food sources of riboflavin include: beef liver, dairy products, eggs, meat, wheat germ and tuna fish.

Riboflavin deficiency causes ariboflavinosis, a common nutritional deficiency disease.

In man the syndrome is said to consist of cheilosis, perlèche -like erosions, seborrhea of the face, vascularization of corneo and keratitis.

The facial and labial lesions of ariboflavinosis contribute largely to the typical facies of classic pellagra and with glossitis constitute the picture of "pellagra sine pellagra."

Photophobia, burning and itching of the eyes, a sensation of eyestrain or rapid visual fatigue, poor distant vision and blurred vision in poor light or twilight are specific symptoms.

Red blood cell glutathione reductase activity can be measured for evidence of deficiency, but usually clinical findings are sufficient to consider deficiency.
Ariboflavinosis

Lack of niacin can cause pellagra

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.

Lack of niacin can cause pellagra 

Thiamine deficiency and their symptoms

Thiamine efficiency can cause cardiovascular and neurological signs and symptoms. Beriberi a serious thiamine efficiency disease, usually affects Asians, who subsist mainly on a diet of unenriched rice and wheat.

Among the symptoms of beriberi: chiefly nervous and cardiovascular systems affected; mental confusion, muscular weakness, loss of ankle and knee jerks, painful calf muscles, peripheral paralysis, edema (wet beriberi), muscle wasting (dry beriberi), enlarged heart.

In the United States, although uncommon, it usually occur in alcoholics, malnourished young adults, and infants who are on a low proteins diet or are being breast-fed by thiamine efficient mothers.

Sign and symptoms of infantile beriberi include cyanosis, dyspnea, tachycardia, aphonia (soundless crying), and eventual cardiac failure.

Although whole grains may be rich in thiamine, processing of grains significantly reduces their thiamine content. Likewise, because thiamin is water soluble and heat sensitive, cooking largely results in the loss or destruction of this vitamin especially when chlorinate waster is used.
Thiamine deficiency and their symptoms

Signs and symptoms of vitamin A deficiency

Vitamin A deficiency is a nutritional deficiency of high magnitude that can be caused by insufficient intake of vitamin A food sources or by vitamin absorption, transport, or metabolism problems.

Vitamin A deficiency is a common form of micronutrient malnutrition affecting 21.1% of preschool-age children and 5.6% of pregnant women worldwide. The available evidence suggests that nearly 800 000 deaths worldwide can be attributed to vitamin A deficiency among women and children.

Vitamin A is an essential nutrient required for maintaining immune function, eye health, vision, growth and survival in human beings. Severe vitamin A deficiency can be identified by the presence of the classical eye signs of xerophthalmia in individuals.

Xerophthalmia remains the leading known cause of preventable blindness in young children . Corneal xerosis, ulceration, and necrosis (keratomalacia) are the result of severe vitamin A deficiency, often precipitated by severe infection such as measles in the presence of wasting malnutrition.

Other health Consequences of vitamin A deficiency including:
•Corneal blindness and disability
•Anemia
•Stunted growth
•Impaired immunity
•Increased severity of infection (eg,measles, diarrhea, or malaria)
•Mortality

Lack of vitamin A – essential for the functioning of the immune system – can lead to irreversible blindness.
Signs and symptoms of vitamin A deficiency

Vitamin A: symptoms of deficiency

Although dietary deficiency of vitamin A is rare in North America and Western Europe, it is the leading cause of childhood blindness worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and Central and South America.

In a well nourished person, vitamin A stores are generally sufficient to last many months on a vitamins A-deficient diet before signs of deficiency appear.

Vitamin A structure

Protein deficiency reduces levels of retinal-binding protein, the blood carrier protein that transport vitamin A in the blood.

The initial symptoms of vitamin A deficiency are night blindness and keratinization of hair follicles. Night blindness usually becomes apparent when the patient enters a dark place or is caught in the glare of oncoming headlights while driving at night.

Continued deficiency leads to damage to eye tissue and irreversible blindness. Vitamin A deficiency interacts with other nutrients deficiencies and with infection, worsening respiratory infections or diarrhea and causing countless deaths.
Vitamin A: symptoms of deficiency

Vitamin deficiency

Vitamins play an integral and an almost central role in human health and wellbeing. Significantly, the vitamins were discovered not by their presence in the diet but because of their absence.

Deficiency of vitamins may arise due to: inadequate dietary intake, decreased absorption, increased need and impaired unitization.

A lack of most of the vitamins known to be required by human resulted in typical clinical syndromes or symptoms that can be cured by adding the necessary vitamin to the diet.

Deficiency of fat soluble vitamins results in night blindness, skeletal deformation, haemorrhages and hemolysis. Deficiencies of water soluble vitamins produce beriberi, glossitis, pellagra, microcytic anaemia, megaloblastic anemia and scurvy. Since most of the water soluble vitamins are component or enzymes, their deficiency leads to blocks in metabolic reactions.

This negative approach to the function of the vitamins is a useful tool in research. The investigator obtains some clues to the metabolic role of nutrients when he observes the functional failures that result when the nutrient is absent from the diet.
Vitamin deficiency

Symptoms of vitamin K deficiency

Deficiency of vitamin K, an element necessary for formation of prothrombin and other clotting factors in the liver, produces abnormal bleeding.

Vitamin K deficiency in the general population, but the risk is significantly greater in infants especially premature infants and those who are exclusively breast fed.

The cardinal sign of vitamin K deficiency is an abnormal bleeding tendency, accompanied by prolonged prothrombin time these signs disappear with vitamin K administration. Without treatment, bleeding may be severe and possibly fatal.

The symptoms of vitamin K deficiency included significant hemorrhage following mild trauma, ecchymosis, petechiae, hematomas, oozing of blood, loss of blood in stool or urine, nose bleed, hematuria, menorrhagia, epistaxis, heavy menstrual flow and mucosal bleeds.

Hemorrhagic disease of the newborn, characterized by a tendency to bleed, is the principal form of vitamin K deficiency.
Symptoms of vitamin K deficiency

What are the symptoms of vitamin A deficiency?

Selected signs and symptoms of deficiency include anorexia, retarded growth, increased susceptibility to infections, obstruction and enlargement of hair follicles.

Continued deficiency leads to damage to eye tissue and irreversible blindness. Typically, the first symptom of vitamin A deficiency is night blindness (nyctalopia), which usually becomes apparent when the patients enter a dark place or is caught in the glare so oncoming headlights while driving at night.

Another sign affecting the eyes is xerophthalmia, which is characterized by dryness of the eye (because of inadequate mucus production), associated with the disappearance of goblet cells in the conjunctivas and the enlargement and keratinization of epithelial cells.

The US recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin A for adults is 5000 IU (1000 retinol equivalents). Rich dietary sources of retinol (preformed vitamin A) include dairy products, eggs and organ meats.

Some carotenoids (found in deep-yellow and dark green vegetables) can be converted to vitamin A during digestion.

In the US diet, approximately half of the vitamin A activity is derived from B-carotene and other carotenoids. Vitamin A deficiency usually results from inadequate intake of foods high in vitamin A (liver, kidney, butter , milk, cream, cheese and fortified margarine) or carotene a precursor of vitamin A found in a dark green leafy vegetables and yellow or orange fruits and vegetables.
What are the symptoms of vitamin A deficiency? 

Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency

Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are commonly non-specified such as
*muscle/joint pain and weakness predominantly of the proximal limb muscles and chronic musculoskeletal pain
*bone pain – deep musculoskeletal limb pain, as well as neuropathy and hyperesthesia, has been associated with vitamin D deficiency
*tiredness or fatigue
*depression

Unless specifically monitored, the first indication of deficiency is likely to be a vertebral or wrist fracture secondary to development of osteoporosis or osteomalacia.

Vitamin D deficiency in neonates and young children leads to growth retardation, skeletal abnormalities, poor tooth eruption and poor dentition.

Vitamin D deficiency remains the single most common cause of rickets in the UK and in many other countries worldwide.
Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency

Deficiency of pantothenic acid

Pantothenic acid is a component of CoA, an essential coenzyme in a variety of reactions that sustain life. 

Deficiency of pantothenic acid is rare and takes several weeks to develop. It has been observed only in cases of severe malnutrition.

World War II prisoners in the Philippines, Burma, and Japan experienced numbness and painful burning and tingling in their feet; these symptoms were relived specially by pantothenic acid.

Deficiencies of this vitamin cause degeneration of nerve tissues with resulting muscular weakness, numbness and malaise.

Symptoms of pantothenic deficiency include burning feet syndrome, which is feeling of tingling and tenderness in the feet; headache; fatigue; impaired motor function; muscle cramps; disturbances of the digestive tract; and vomiting.
Deficiency of pantothenic acid

Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources

Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources
Although bioflavonoids are not true vitamins in the strictest sense, they are sometimes referred to as vitamin P. Bioflavonoids are essential for the absorption of vitamin C, and the two should be taken together. There are many different bioflavonoids, including citrin, eriodictyol, flavones, hesperetin, hesperidin, quercetin, quercetrin, and rutin. The human body cannot produce bioflavonoids, so they must be supplied in the diet.

Bioflavonoids are used extensively in the treatment of athletic injuries because they relieve pain, bumps and bruises. They also reduce pain located in the legs or across the back, and lessen symptoms associated with the prolonged bleeding and low serum calcium. Bioflavonoids act synergistically with vitamin C to protect and to preserve the structure of capillaries. In addition, bioflavonoids have an antibacterial effect and promote circulation, stimulate bile production, lower cholesterol levels, and treat and prevent cataracts. When taken with vitamin C, bioflavonoids also reduce the symptoms of oral herpes.

Peppers, buckwheat, blackcurrants and the white material just beneath the peel of citrus fruits contain flavonoids. Sources of bioflavonoids include apricots, blackberries, cherries, grapefruit, grapes, lemons, oranges, plums and prunes. Herbs that contain bioflavonoids include chervil, elder berries, hawthorn berry, horsetail, rose hips and shepherd’s purse.
Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources

Folic Acid and Cobalamin

Folic Acid and Cobalamin
Folic Acid
Folic acid is required for the formation of blood cells by the bone marrow and is involved in the formation of the blood pigment hemoglobin. It is also required for the synthesis of some amino acids. Deficiency symptoms involve pernicious anemia. Nuts, dried beans, turnips, lentils, corn and shredded wheat are good sources of this vitamin, while liver and wheat bran are excellent.

Cobalamin
B12 or cobalamin is a very complex chemical compound. This vitamin is required for the normal development of red blood cells, and a deficiency in it causes acute pernicious anemia and a variety of other disorders. The exact requirement of vitamin B12 is yet unknown, since some B12 is synthesized by bacteria in the intestine. The organs of animals are excellent sources of vitamin B12 and the muscles of warm-blooded animals and fish are good sources.
Folic Acid and Cobalamin

Pantothenic acid

Pantothenic acid
Pantothenic acid, a vitamin required for normal growth, nerve development and normal skin is a component of enzyme systems involved in metabolism (e.g., acetylation processes). It is believes and there is evidence, that Pantothenic acid is intimately related to riboflavin in human nutrition.
Deficiencies symptoms can be successfully treated with either compound. Deficiencies of this vitamin cause degeneration of nerve tissues with resulting muscular weakness, numbness and malaise.

Scaling skin and dermatitis, diarrhea with bloody stools, and ulceration of the intestine are also deficiency symptoms. The organs of animals (liver, heart, kidneys) and eggs, whole wheat products and peanuts are excellent sources of Pantothenic acid. The muscular tissue of animals, cheese, beans, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms and salmons are very good sources of this vitamin.
Pantothenic acid

B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin

B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin
Thiamin
The B vitamins are water soluble. Thiamin – vitamin B1 is involved in all bodily oxidations that lead to the formation of carbon dioxide. It is necessary for nerve function, appetite, and normal digestion. It is also required for growth, fertility, and lactation. The symptoms of vitamin deficiency are retardation of growth, palpitation and enlargement of the heart, hypertension, and beriberi. The various effects of a disturbance of the nerve centers such as forgetfulness or difficulty in thinking are other manifestations of vitamin B1 deficiency. The vitamin is often lacking in the diet because much of the naturally occurring amounts of it in food are destroyed during the processing of the food. The adult requirement of vitamin B1 is related to the food (calorie) intake. Fresh pork is an excellent source of vitamin B1 and the heart, liver, and kidneys of pork, beef and lamb are fair sources.

Riboflavin
Riboflavin – vitamin B2 is water soluble. This vitamin makes up a part of enzyme systems involved in the oxidation and reduction of different materials in the body. Deficiency of riboflavin generally results in growth retardation and may result in vision impairment, sealing of the skin, and lesions on mucous tissue. Neuritis is another deficiency effect. The minimum intake of riboflavin for an adult is about 2.0mg per day. The liver and kidney of pork, beef, and lamb are excellent sources of riboflavin, and the heart of these animals is a good source. Fair amounts of riboflavin are found in the muscular tissues of pork, beef, and lamb, while more is found in veal.
B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin

What is Vitamin E?

What is Vitamin E?
Vitamin E, of which there are four different forms (the tocopherol), is fat soluble. The tocopherols have the same name except with the prefix alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta- (the first four letters of the Greek alphabet). The four compounds are closely related, with some difference in the molecular weight and in the position and number of certain molecular constituents.




Function of Vitamin E
The vitamin is an antioxidant that serves to prevent the oxidation of some body components, such as unsaturated fatty acids, and is necessary for reproduction. Almost all foods contain some vitamin E, although corn oil, cottonseed oil, margarine, and peanut oil are especially good sources of this vitamin.


Vitamin E deficiency
While the symptoms for vitamin E deficiency in humans are not clearly established, experiments with various animals have shown that vitamin E deficiency has an adverse effect on reproduction with apparent irreversible injury to the germinal epithelium. Other symptoms noted in animal studies include injury to the central nervous system, growth retardation, muscular dystrophy, and interference with normal heart action.
What is Vitamin E?