Abstract
Early thiamine deficiency studies were performed on pigeons because these birds were uniquely sensitive to polished rice. Symptoms frequently were evident by 21 days, which was as early as or earlier than any other animal model. This sensitivity also took the form of pronounced symptoms and certain death when not reversed with thiamine. The reversal feature was key in determining the significance of biochemical changes. If symptoms reversed with thiamine treatment along with key substrates such as decreased lactate, then this implied a role for lactate in the generation of the symptoms (Fig. 1).
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© 2010 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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McCandless, D.W. (2010). Early Thiamine Deficiency. In: Thiamine Deficiency and Associated Clinical Disorders. Contemporary Clinical Neuroscience. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-311-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-311-4_2
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