The effect of the duration of vitamin-A deficiency in female rabbits upon the incidence of hydrocephalus in their young.

When female rabbits are subjected to an experimental vitamin-A deficiency before mating, their offspring show signs of a nervous disorder from three to six weeks after birth (Millen, Woollam, and Lamming, 1953; Lamming, Woollam, and Millen, 1954). This disorder was attributed to hydrocephalus which was present in the young animals. In a subsequent paper (Millen and others, 1954) it was reported that a congenital hydrocephalus was constantly found in young stillborn rabbits when their dam had been maintained on a vitamin-A deficient diet for periods of from 14 to 38 weeks before mating. The initial observations on the production of hydrocephalus by a maternal vitamin-A deficiency were made on a small number of litters from an inbred strain of rabbits. Attention was drawn to the need for the substantiation of these findings (Annotation, Brit. med. J., 1954). In order, therefore, to study more closely with larger numbers this relationship between maternal vitamin-A deficiency and the incidence of hydrocephalus in the young a colony of rabbits was established in 1953. In this paper the effect of maternal hypovitaminosis A upon the incidence of hydrocephalus in the young in a large number of litters is reported.