Aim and Objective: To study the effects of Vitamin B12 deficiency in infants and to see if there were any changes in the findings on treatment on follow up scans. Materials &Methods: We present three cases, children of age 6, 9 and 12 months of age, whose mothers had vitamin B12 deficiency. Patients underwent MRI brain scans after taking proper consent and were followed up after they were treat...

Vitamin B12 deficiency is one of the common conditions in the elderly population leading to confusion, depression, memory loss and balance problems. Unfortunately there is no gold standard test for the diagnosis of cobalamin deficiency and a wide range of variation in reference levels according to country, and laboratory assay used. This poses a problem in diagnosing this condition making it a ...

Background. Pancytopenia has multiple etiologies like megaloblastic anemia, aplastic anemia, leukemia, and various infections. We investigated the clinical, etiological and hematological profile including bone marrow morphology of patients with pancytopenia in relation to their vitamin B12 and folic acid status at a tertiary care referral hospital in north India. Methods. A total of 140 consecu...

Only select prokaryotes can biosynthesize vitamin B12 (i.e., cobalamins), but these organic co-enzymes are required by all microbial life and can be vanishingly scarce across extensive ocean biomes. Although global ocean genome data suggest cyanobacteria to be a major euphotic source of cobalamins, recent studies have highlighted that >95% of cyanobacteria can only produce a cobalamin analog, p...

The ability of vitamin B12 (cobalamin) to spare the dietary requirement of animals for labile methyl donors, such as choline or methionine, is now well established (for a review see Arnstein, 1958a). This effect appears to be due to stimulation of synthesis of methyl groups, as shown by an increased utilization of a variety of 14C-labelled precursors, including formate (Arnstein & Neuberger, 19...

Megaloblastic anemia is categorized by distinguished hematopoietic cell morphology, unproductive hematopoiesis, induced by folic acid and/or vitamin B12 deficiency [1]. Ineffective DNA synthesis in hematopoietic progenitor cells or myelodysplastic syndrome leading to congenital disorders is commonly responsible for the megaloblastic anemia. In western populations, cobalamin (vitamin B12) defici...

PURPOSE The results of several studies point to the positive role of vegetarian diets in reducing the risk of diabetes, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases. However, exclusion of animal products in vegetarian diets may affect the cobalamin status and cause an elevation of the plasma homocysteine level. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of vegetarian diets on serum concentratio...