Investigations of the C‐vitamine standard in healthy children and in children suffering from gingivitis.

Summary. 1) Lund and Lieck's method of determining‐ the blood‐serum content of ascorbic‐acid, which, in our hands, when employed in its original form, did not give employable results, has been modified in certain respects and then tested in several ways. The method thus modified has been found to be very well applicable for clinical use. 2) It has been demonstrated that the determination of the serum‐ascorbic‐acid‐fasting‐value alone gives a less reliable and sometimes quite erroneous picture of the individual C‐standard. The necessity of ascorbic‐acid loading – and of afterwards investigating the ascorbic‐acid content of the serum has been emphasized. 3) For clinical use, it has proved sufficient and suitable, after determining the ascorbic‐acid‐fasting‐value of the serum and after loading with ascorbic acid, to investigate the ascorbic‐acid content after 2 hours. 4) After collecting detailed food‐anamneses, there was investigated, in 44 healthy children without gingivitis and 57 children with severe gingivitis, between the ages of 3–16, the ascorbic‐acid content of the blood‐serum both before and after the administration of ascorbic acid, per os, to an amount of 10 mg per kg body‐weight. This investigation showed: that the ascorbic‐acid content of the serum increased in the same degree that the raw‐fruit content of the food was added to. This signifies an indirect control of the reliability of the food‐anamnesies, that the average fasting‐value for children who, every day, were given a moderate supply of raw fruit (approximately 1 orange or 1 apple) in addition to which appeared to be an otherwise normal food, was 0,71 ± 0,073 mg‐%, and that the 2‐hours' value, after loading, was 1,87 ±.0,111 mg‐%, that the corresponding figures for children who, under otherwise similar conditions, seldom or, at most, only once a week, received raw fruit, were 0,24 ± 0,025 mg‐% and 0,69 ±. 0,050 mg‐%, respectively, that, when the fasting‐values lies below 0,40 mg‐% and, simultaneously, the 2‐hours' value is below 1 mg‐%, the individual investigated has probably been in receipt of food poor in C, or a sub‐normal C‐standard is present. It was pointed out that the existence of this combination of figure‐values does not, alone, allow of the diagnosis, scurvy, that, from the investigations carried out (general clinical examination; food‐anamnesis, investigation of the bood‐serum's ascorbic‐acid content) of 44 children without gingivitis and 57 children with severe gingivitis, there may be made the deduction that nothing spoke in favour of the probability of gingivitis having any connection with an sub‐normal C‐standard in those individuals, but that this affection must be referred to some other etiological factors, that even very low serum‐ascorbic‐acid values, both before and after the administration of ascorbic acid, may be made to rise to a normal level in 3 weeks by adding fruit to the food in moderate amounts.