Vitamin D

Vitamin D (Third Edition)

Vitamin D
2011, Pages 3-12
Vitamin D

Chapter 1 - Historical Overview of Vitamin D

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-381978-9.10001-0Get rights and content

Publisher Summary

This chapter focuses on the discovery of vitamin D and its uses. It begins with a critical description of the early nutritional views on vitamins. Following this, it presents the experiment carried out by McCollum and Osborne and Mendel, which lead to the discovery of Vitamin A and B Complex. From irradiation of mixtures of plant sterols, Windaus and colleagues isolated a material that was active in healing rickets. This substance was called “vitamin D1,” but its structure was not determined. Vitamin D1 proved to be an adduct of tachysterol and vitamin D2, and thus vitamin D1 was actually an error in identification. Besides bone mineralization, the earliest discovered function of vitamin D is its important role in the absorption and utilization of calcium. For many years, investigators have attempted to show that vitamin D plays a role directly on the mineralization process of the skeleton. Experiments have shown that vitamin D does not play a significant role in the actual mineralization process of the skeleton but that the failure to mineralize the skeleton in vitamin D deficiency is due to inadequate levels of calcium and phosphorus in the plasma. Thus, the action of vitamin D in mineralizing the skeleton and in preventing hypocalcemic tetany is the elevation of plasma calcium and phosphorus. These discoveries finally laid to rest the concept of a role of vitamin D in mineralization.

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