STUDY ON THE DIAGNOSIS AND PREVENTION OF NUTRITIONAL NIGHTBLINDNESS WITH RECOMMENDATION FOR A NEW APPARATUS FOR THE DARK ADAPTATION TEST / 营养学报

ABSTRACT

Sixty-seven students suffering from nightblindness in a middle school in Peking were examined with a new apparatus designed by us for the dark adaptation test before and after the treatment of the disease during April, 1955. This apparatus was equipped with a series of holes with different luminosity. The time needed to see all the holes before and after the treatment with vitamin A, was 118 and 62 seconds respectively. In the following spring, a year after diet improvement program was started, there were no complaint of nightblindness among the students. In May, 1956, 49 students who had sufferred from nightblindness in the previous year, were reexamined with the same apparatus, and the time needed was 45 seconds When this result was compared with that of a vitamin A supplemented group (31 seconds), there was no significant difference.From the above findings, it has been shown that nightblindness can be prevented by improvement of the diet alone, and the above apparatus is suitable for the diagnosis of nightblindness for mass nutritional survey. The description of the apparatus is presented in the text.