Abstract
To study the reasons for the low thiamine content of milk in Japan and also the relation of latent mastitis to the content and partition of thiamine in the milk, we determined the contents of total thiamine and various forms of thiamine in the milks drawn from 28 mastitis negative quarters and from 24 mastitic quarters by the thiochrome method. The fractionation of thiamine was performed by a modified Houston's method. The content of total thiamine in apparently normal milk varies from 21.1-56.7 μg/dl, on an average 34.9±3.06μg/dl composed of 60.7% of free thiamine, 33.6% of cocarboxylase and 5.7% of protein-bound thiamine. In latent mastitis, the content of total thiamine was lower by 10 to 15 percent according to the degrees of infection.
