TREATMENT OF AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS WITH VITAMIN E (ALPHA-TOCOPHEROL)

Excerpt

Following the pioneer work of Evans and Burr,¹ who demonstrated that both male and female rats ceased to grow on diets deficient in vitamin E, many reports appeared in the subsequent ten years confirming these investigators' findings in various animals and clarifying the pathologic basis of the paralysis noted. Pappenheimer and Goettsch² produced paralyses, ataxia and tremors in growing chicks, ducks and rabbits following diets deficient in vitamin E, and Blumberg³ likewise was able to obtain retardation of growth in young rats at the twelfth to the fourteenth week, with complete cessation at from eighteen to twenty-two weeks; the aforementioned conditions were completely corrected when vitamin E, in the form of wheat germ oil, was added to the diet. Interest in the effects of vitamin E was further increased when Ringsted⁴ produced paresis in more mature rats on a diet deficient in vitamin E which did