2006 Volume 23 Pages 124-127
To clarify vitamin B1 nutritional status in Japanese, blood vitamin B1 concentrations in middle-aged men and women lived in Kyoto and Shiga prefectures of Japan were examined. Total 1255 inhabitants; 734 men (47.4 ± 8.4 years) and 521 women (46.5 ± 8.9 years) had undergone the physical and biochemical in plasma examinations includ- ing blood vitamin B1 concentrations.
Blood vitamin B1 concentrations in average were 34.7 ± 9.6 ng/ml in men and 30.3 ± 8.0 ng/ml in women. Blood vitamin B1 concentrations are used as a suitable index of vitamin B1 status, and their low reference value of 20-50 ng/ml fixed by many clinical examination companies may lead to delay the detection of marginal vitamin B1 deficiency.
On the other hand, as a result of sudden changes of life-style, dietary habits have also changed remarkably. By the report of the national nutritional survey, vitamin B1 intake has continued to decrease little by little since 1970s. And moreover, at the store, there are a lot of processed foods, prepared foods and nutritional supplementary foods. These findings raise questions whether each individual really has vitamin B1 intake more than enough. In this paper, we carried out a survey to assess the vitamin B1 nutritional status of middle-aged Japanese men and women who do not ingest nutritional supplementary foods.
