Vitamin A-deficient Research Articles

CELLULAR CHANGES IN THE ANTERIOR HYPOPHYSES OF VITAMIN-A DEFICIENT RATS

That a lack of vitamin A in the animal diet results in sterility is a well-established fact. In this paper, and in others which are to follow, the authors are concerned with the modus operandi of vitamin-A deficiency in producing the pathological and physiological changes coincident with sterility in both sexes. The deficiency may act directly in causing damage to the gonads themselves or indirectly through a disruption of an endocrine relationship in which the gonad becomes non-functional and undergoes atrophic changes because of dietary damage of the endocrine gland or glands from which its stimulating principle emanates. Mason and Wolf (1) have produced physiological evidence that vitamin A deficiency has a direct damaging effect on the reproductive organs. They compared the gonad-stimulating capacities of the hypophyses of castrate and non-castrate vitamin-A deficient animals with litter-mate castrate and non-castrate animals on an adequate diet. The ovaries of the test animals which received hypophys...