Relationship of Vitamin a to Respiratory Infections in Infants

During the past year or more, increasing emphasis has been laid on the rôle of vitamin A in the prevention of infection. Some physicians are of the opinion that this vitamin protects infants and young children against infections of the respiratory tract. Such statements naturally have been made use of by pharmaceutic concerns, which have stressed the antiinfective value of their vitamin-A-containing products in medical journals as well as in magazines for the laity. This contention is based principally on carefully conducted animal experiments carried out in the course of the investigations of McCollum,1Drummond,2Osborne and Mendel,3Daniels and her associates,4Steenbock, Sell and Buell,5Sherman and Munsell,6Wolbach and Howe,7and Green and Mellanby.8These investigators have shown that in rats receiving diets devoid of vitamin A there almost invariably develop multiple infections, to which they eventually succumb. The most