Prevention of a Vitamin Deficiency by Provision of the Product synthesized by the Coenzyme which contains the Vitamin

Abstract

SINCE the early work of Evans and Lepkovsky¹ it has been recognized that a high-fat diet has a sparing action on thiamine. Jones² demonstrated that the deleterious effects of oxythiamine, an inhibitor of thiamine (vitamin B₁, could be essentially counteracted by a high-fat diet. We thought it would be interesting to see what changes, if any, take place in the activity of two of the enzyme systems requiring thiamine pyrophosphate—pyruvate dehydrogenase and transketolase, a key enzyme of the pentose cycle—when oxythiamine is administered to rats on a high-fat diet.