Talk:Thiamin

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Can someone please clear up

" Well-known syndromes caused by lack of thiamine due to malnutrition or a diet high in thiaminase-rich foods include Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and beriberi, diseases also common in chronic abusers of alcohol.

"

I don't understand these two sentences. Does it mean that the diseases occur in Thiaminase deficient diets *AND* in chronic abusers of alcohol, or *JUST LIKE, AS IN* ...

bah!

It might be clearer if you recall that compounds ending in "ase" are enzymes which lyse or divide the compound listed before it. Think about penicillin and penicillinase (an enzyme made by bacteria) which prevents the PCN from working. If the diet has a lot of -ase it will break down the compound ( here thiamine) causing deficiency. Alcoholics are generally malnourished because they would rather drink than eat well.Hope this helps. Hoot 21:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well. Perhaps Umetaro Suzuki takes the gold for discovering B1. Or perhaps it was Casimir Funk who did it. We might even credit Christiaan Eijkman. However, it seems unlikely to credit Mr. Suzuki because his discoveries would have been well-known in Japan, and the officers running the POW camps would have augmented the prisoners' diets and saved a vast number of lives. Only a small amount of B1 is required to save a person. Obviously the Japanese Imperial forces did not know this fact, which reasonable persons should have known under similar circumstances, or they would have moved swiftly to prevent the slaughter, so I can only conclude that they did not know. If I were to say that they knew of their famous countryman's discovery and did not use it so save lives, that would be slandering Japanese officers. You can have Mr. Suzuki, or the warcamp tenders, but I do not grant you both. Choose carefuly, grasshopper. regford 20:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


Someone should add to the article that 'aneurin' is another name for thiamine. 193.77.101.102 17:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] It looks to me like Biotest is advertising more then it is educating.

They cite no studies to demonstrate that thiamine di(2-methylpropionate) disulfide is more easily absorbed, also absorbed doesn't mean it's biologically active. I googled the words "biologically active" thiamine, and it was "Thiamine pyrophosphate" which kept appering as the most active form of thiamine.

I think biotest is using Wiki to peddle their product, what say you?

[edit] Nutrition science news?

It's a quack "journal" advocating homeopathy. I can't see how this article can be taken seriously if NSN is cited.

[edit] Coenzyme or cofactor?

This page says that TPP is a coenzyme, but I've read that it is in fact a cofactor of pyruvate dehydrogenase, and a coenzyme of transketolase. I'm confused. Anyone have any ideas?

In both cases, the term "coenzyme" seems the most appropiate.

[edit] Skeeted in whole blood?

The section on testing for thiamine deficiency includes a sentence beginning "Thiamine can also be skeeted directly in whole blood" (emphasis added). What does "skeeted" mean? It should be defined or a link to a definition should be included.

[edit] Diabetes and Thiamine testing

I don't feel qualified to try to incorporate this, but here's an article describing research which found that diabetics tend to be significantly thiamine deficient, which may in fact cause many of the serious symptoms of diabetes.

The article also says that transketolase may not be a good diagnostic tool, but I could be misreading that. Blurble 14:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of vitamins....

I hope someone more wiki-skilled than I will incorporate things drawn from....

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/vitamin_b1/eijkman.html

.. and similar into this page about thiamine.

I understand from a BBC TV program that Carol Vordeman's great-grandfather Vorderman (I think the absent/ extra "r" are correct) was chief medical officer for the whole "Dutch East Indies" (today's Indonesia)... and noticed the link between beriberi and white (polished) vs brown rice.... a difference that was especially important to prisoners, who ate white rice... and died... in their millions...

Supposedly the current head of the Eijkman institute... named for the man who got the Nobel prize for "discovering" B1 has said that Vorderman should have shared that prize.

Tkbwik 20:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New article request (genetic diseases section of article)

I would say that if this particular section becomes too long, then one could make a new article, but the suggested name seems a bit too long. It might make sense to eventually make an article with a name something like "Genetic diseases of thyamin metabolism," but right now there doesn't seem to be enough material for that. Someone else would just come along and want to merge it back into this article.
WriterHound (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)