Treatment of Rickets With Irradiated Ergosterol (Vigantol).

The absence of any clinical report of the effect of irradiated ergosterol on human rickets in the American literature seemed to justify recording the results obtained in 9 cases of rickets treated with Vigantol. Both the German product and the first American product were used. The latter was prepared by the Winthrop Chemical Company. Hess 1 has already reported successful results in experimental rat rickets with ergosterol and in human rickets through the use of irradiated yeast.

The researches of Windaus, Hess, Pohl, Rosenheim, 2 and their co-workers established the fact that ergosterol is the provitamine which becomes Vitamine D after irradiation for 1/2 to 12 hours. If irradiated longer, its power of being activated is gradually lost, being completely lost after 80 hours of exposure to ultraviolet rays. It is obtained from yeast, ergot, and mushrooms, and occurs as a contaminator of cholesterol from 1/20 to 1/50%. It is oxidized if exposed to air for a long time, but if kept in oil (as Vigantol) it retains its potency for at least 6 months.

Rosenheim, Gyorgy, 3 Hottinger, 4 and others have shown that irradiated ergosterol is 20,000 times as antiricketic as cod liver oil and that in dosage of 1/10000 mg. daily it prevents rickets in a rat on a ricketic diet, and that 1-5 mg. daily heals human rickets, osteomalacia, tetany, and rickets tarda and is also effective prophylactically in premature infants. The reports in the German literature are numerous and complete. Recent work 5 , 6 here and abroad shows that the purified cholesterol still after irradiation has antiricketic properties if given in a dosage 30 times as great as originally used by Windaus and Hess.