546 THE TOCOPHEROLS 



p. 552) during the latter part of gestation. i"^' ^^^- le^-i^i The reason for this 

 is not clear; it may help to overcome the restricted placental transfer of 

 tocopherol, or it may reflect a physiologic preparation for more effective 

 transfer of tocopherol to the milk, better to prepare the infant for the exi- 

 gencies of early extrauterine existence. Human breast milk has a consider- 

 ably higher content of tocopherol than does cow's milkj^''^' 1^1-174 further- 

 more, in both species colostrum is much richer in tocopherol than is later 

 milk. 



There is thus unquestionable evidence that the newborn infant has a 

 rather small endowment of tocopherol at birth. Analysis of one full-term 

 infant in toto'^"' ^^^ has indicated a total content of about 25 mg., or ap- 

 proximately the daily intake of an adult on a high-quality diet. It also ap- 

 pears that tocopherol concentration in tissues shows no significant increase 

 during the first three years of postnatal life."^^^ It is pertinent at this point 

 to call attention to the fact that certain manifestations of vitamin E de- 

 ficiency have been produced only during relatively early phases of life of 

 the species, and that in producing states of experimental vitamin E de- 

 ficiency it has always been a practice to initiate the deficient diet early 

 in life, before any appreciable tissue storage has occurred, because of the 

 recognized difficulty in depleting tissue reserves of the vitamin. The ques- 

 tion then arises as to whether the seemingly precarious tocopherol status 

 of the newborn infant provides any basis for a natural, or a conditioned, 

 deficiency state during infancy or early childhood. 



a. Susceptibility of Erythrocytes to Hemolysis 



Gyorgy and his associates^^^ ■ "^ have demonstrated that erythrocytes of 

 low-E adult rats, and of newborn rats from mothers on stock diets, are 

 readily hemolyzed in vivo or in vitro by small amounts of dialuric acid, 

 alloxantin (both reduction products of alloxan), or hydrogen peroxide, and 

 that small amounts of a-tocopherol protect the cells against these effects. 

 In the writer's laboratory, it has also been shown that erythrocytes of 

 vitamin E-deficient monkeys hemolyze when exposed to small amounts of 



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