Pellagra
Description:
Pellagra — a disease, one of avitaminosis which is a consequence of long defective food (a lack of PP vitamin and the proteins in particular containing irreplaceable amino acid tryptophane). In the 19th century this disease often occurred among the population of areas where as the main foodstuff corn was used.
The American professor Joseph Goldberger in 1916 decided to establish whether the pellagra is an infectious disease or it treats avitaminosis. For this purpose Goldberger and fifteen of his colleagues put experience on themselves. They took material from patients with a pellagra: blood, allocations from a nose and a mouth, skin scales — and within a month mixed to the food. None of doctors got sick with a pellagra that disproved opinion on its infectious nature. Often occurred at the concluded Soviet labor camps and it is still widespread in South America and Africa, and also among chronic alcoholics.
Pellagra symptoms:
The classical name of a pellagra — "a disease of three D" — diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia. (In English-speaking literature sometimes add the fourth D — death of English Death)
Also symptoms are:
* Photodermatosis
* Aggression
* Dermatitis, alopecia, Eden
* Glossitis
* Damage of skin
* Sleeplessness
* Weakness
* Confusion
* Ataxy, paralysis of extremities, peripheral neuritis
* Diarrhea
* Dilatatsionny cardiomyopathy
* Dementia
Pellagra reasons:
Lack of PP vitamin and the proteins in particular containing irreplaceable amino acid tryptophane.
Treatment of the Pellagra:
Treatment of a pellagra is carried out in the conditions of a hospital by niacin injections by three times a day. To people sick with a pellagra appoint a special medical proteinaceous diet, following which the person consumes products with the increased content of RR vitamin. At the heart of prevention of a pellagra, as well as all avitaminosis, various food and moderate alcohol intake lies.
