Joseph Goldberger's research on the prevention of pellagra

Pellagra was first identified among Spanish peas-ants by Don Gaspar Casal in 1735. A loathsome skin disease, it was called ‘mal de la rosa ’ and often mistaken for leprosy. Pellagra has sometimes been called the disease of the four Ds – dermatitis, diar-rhoea, dementia and death. In 1937 it was dis-covered that pellagrawas caused by a deficiency of the B vitamin niacin (nicotinic acid). The body’s synthesis of this vitamin depends on the avail-ability of the essential amino acid tryptophan, which is found inmilk, cheese, fish,meat and eggs. Two decades before the discovery of niacin, how-ever, epidemiological and clinical research done by Joseph Goldberger and his colleagues had identified that pellagra could be prevented by im-