The Discovery of the Vitamins

Abstract

Abstract:The discovery of the vitamins was a major scientifi c achievement in our understanding of health and disease. In 1912, Casimir Funk originally coined the term "vitamine". The major period of discovery began in the early nineteenth century and ended at the mid-twentieth century. The puzzle of each vitamin was solved through the work and contributions of epidemiologists, physicians, physiologists, and chemists. Rather than a mythical story of crowning scientifi c breakthroughs, the reality was a slow, stepwise progress that included setbacks, contradictions, refutations, and some chicanery. Research on the vitamins that are related to major defi ciency syndromes began when the germ theory of disease was dominant and dogma held that only four nutritional factors were essential: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and minerals. Clinicians soon recognized scurvy, beriberi, rickets, pellagra, and xerophthalmia as specifi c vitamin defi ciencies, rather than diseases due to infections or toxins. Experimental physiology with animal models played a fundamental role in nutrition research and greatly shortened the period of human suffering from vitamin defi ciencies. Ultimately it was the chemists who isolated the various vitamins, deduced their chemical structure, and developed methods for synthesis of vitamins. Our understanding of the vitamins continues to evolve from the initial period of discovery.

Vitamin B1 in critically ill patients: needs and challenges

“…His work, however, allowed for the emerging scientific movement of nutritional deficiencies to progress. Notable attributions that stemmed from both Eijkman and Grijns' works include the discovery of other B vitamins and the coining of the term 'vitamin' (from vital amine) by Funk in 1912 (although many vitamins were later shown to not be amines) and the eventual isolation of crystallised thiamine in 1926 by Jansen and Donath [30,31].…”

“…On a broader scale, this (much later) resulted in the addition of vitamins in foodstuffs, the existence of vitamin supplements as preventative measures to beriberi (vitamin B1 deficiency), rickets (vitamin D deficiency), scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) and pellagra (vitamin B3 deficiency), as well as vitamin recommended dietary intakes (RDI) [1,2,30,[37][38][39].…”

The Metabolic Plant Feedback Hypothesis: How Plant Secondary Metabolites Nonspecifically Impact Human Health

“…While it is true that most vitamins are dietderived, vitamins are effective for multiple diseases and are a chemically diverse class of secondary metabolites. The major period of discovery in vitamin research began in the early nineteenth century and ended in the mid-twentieth century [99,100] with the rise of molecular biology. Nonetheless, new potentially important dietary factors among phytochemicals are being uncovered as illustrated by the most abundant dietary plant sesquiterpene, beta-caryophyllene, which exerts broad anti-inflammatory effects in numerous animal models via a particular receptor system [101][102][103].…”

Best practices for germ-free derivation and gnotobiotic zebrafish husbandry

“…This challenge became apparent early in gnotobiotic animal research, as variable growth and survival in early GF animal studies was attributed in part to inadequate diets. Advances in formulation and sterilization of GF diets, most notably discovery of vitamins (Semba, 2012) enabled gnotobiology to move forward. However, nutritional and biochemical contributions of microbiota to host biology continue to be discovered (Krishnan, Alden, & Lee, 2015), suggesting that even well-established standard diets for gnotobiotic mice and other animals may still have “insufficiencies” that could underlie observed differences between GF and colonized animals.…”