TREATMENT OF PERNICIOUS ANEMIA BY A SPECIAL DIET

The dietetic treatment of pernicious anemia is of more importance than hithertogenerally recognized.

Forty-five patients with pernicious anemia observed essentially in sequence arecontinuing to take a special diet that they have now been living on for from aboutsix weeks to two years but which was temporarily omitted by three. This diet iscomposed especially of foods rich in complete proteins and iron—particularly liver—and containing an abundance of fruits and fresh vegetables and relatively low infat.

Following the diet, all the patients showed a prompt, rapid and distinct remission of their anemia, coincident with at least rather marked symptomatic improvement, except for pronounced disorders due to spinal cord degeneration. Improvement was often striking, so that where the red blood cell count averaged for allbefore starting the diet 1,470,000 per cubic millimeter, one month afterward itaveraged 3,400,000; and for the twenty-seven cases observed from four to sixmonths after the diet was begun, the average count was 4,500,000 per cubic millimeter.

Patients having had two or more relapses showed on the average slightly lowerred blood corpuscle counts about one and two months after commencing the dietthan did those who had started it in their first or second relapse.

Change in the frequency of bowel movements, temporary increase of reticulocytes in the peripheral blood, and decrease of the icterus index of the blood serumwere among the earliest signs that heralded the patient’s better health.

All the patients have remained to date in a good state of health except three, whodiscontinued the diet; two rapidly improved on resuming it and the other has justcommenced it again. As the diet was advised for most of the patients less than eightmonths ago, enough time has not yet elapsed to determine whether or not the remissions will last any longer than in other cases.