Pellagra

The etiology of pellagra has attracted the consideration of a number of investigators who have been able to study it on an unusually large scale and with exceptional facilities. In this country the zeist theory, which related pellagra in some way to the dietary use of maize and maize products, has been finally abandoned. An exclusive diet of corn is unquestionably inadequate; and corn damaged by microbiotic changes may well be harmful at times to persons ingesting it. But no adequate review of the actual incidence of pellagra, as it has occurred in different places and among different peoples, will any longer justify the assumption that the pathogenesis of the disease is concerned primarily with a corn factor. Pellagra may occur without the use of corn.
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research