Biochemical Analyses of Beriberi Patients

Abstract

We undertook the study of the metabolism of vitamin B_1 in 21 beriberi patients and 674 normal subjects. In the beriberi patients the total vitamin B_1 in the whole blood (VB_1) and the transketolase activity in the hemolysate (TKA) were significantly lower, whereas the thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) effect was significantly higher than in the normal subjects. Since the greater parts of the two groups however overlapped, they could not clearly defined through each of these three values. So, we analyzed these results statistically. Beriberi was diagnosed with an accuracy of 87.7% by the discriminant analysis with VB_1,TKA and TPP effect. Among the three values, biochemical data such as TPP effect proved most effective in distinguishing the two groups. It was concluded that the VB_1,TKA and TPP effect were useful biochemical indices for the diagnosis of beriberi.