The Relation of Vitamin a to Anophthalmos in Pigs

Abstract

Forty-two pigs (four litters) were born blind at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in the course of experiments relating to maternal vitamin-A deficiency. Other defects noted were cleft palate, cleft lip, accessory ears, and arrested ascension of the kidneys. Definite and complete genetic tests were made to determine whether or not an hereditary factor was responsible for the eye anomaly and close matings such as blind brother x blind sister, and normal mother x blind son, produced only normal pigs. These studies leave no reasonable doubt that maternal deficiency of vitamin A will result in a variety of defects in the offspring, including blindness and even a failure of complete development of eye tissue, together with those above-mentioned. The normal mothers of these blind pigs were depleted to a very low state of vitamin A before breeding and were continued on the vitamin-A-free ration for the first 30 days of the gestation period (the time during which the eye develops in the pig embryo). Vitamin-A deficiency is by no means uncommon in human diet and it may easily be that many of the eye weaknesses which we suffer today are due to maternal vitamin-A deficiency, just as Dr. H. M. Taylor has recently discovered that some of the deafness among Southern children is due to quinine taken by the mother during pregnancy. In any case, it is obvious that until we have evidence to the contrary, we should insist on an abundance of vitamin A in the diet of the expectant mother in the early stages of pregnancy when so many of the vital organs of the embryo are being formed. From the Division of Swine Husbandry, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. Read before the Association for Research in Ophthalmology, Atlantic City, June 11, 1935.