THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF MODERN VITAMINOLOGY

V.B. Spirichev

General subjects and achievement of modern vitaminology are discussed. The most impressive success in fundamental vitaminology during last three-four decades was achieved in following areas: elucidation of vitamins metabolic roles and molecular mechanisms in their action; development and improvement of high sensitive modern methods for analytical vitamins determination in biological objects and food; establishment of reliable criteria and methods for human vitamin status assessment; examination of physiological human vitamin requirements and establishment of Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) or Adequate Levels (AL) of their intake; elaboration of scientifical grounds for reasonable vitamins application in diseases prevention and treatment.
In the area of applied vitaminology the most attention during last decades was paid to next subjects: regular broad vitamin status examination of representative groups of population; reasoning, development, realization and evaluation of broad scale measures for prevention of vitamin insufficiency and improvement of vitamin status of population; development and industrial production of vitamins, multivitamin-mineral preparations and various vitamin enriched food stuffs for the same purpose.
Decrease of state financial support for fundamental studies and cessation of such a support for applied investigation make it necessary to organize nonstate commercial scientific-technologic center functioning on the requests of vitamin producers and consumers.

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