Printed in U.S.A. Effect of Pyridoxine Supplementation on

S ERUM TRANSAMINASES have been studied for some time, but erythrocyte tran-saminases, particularly glutamic-pyruvic transaminase (GPT), have been investi-gated only to a limited degree. The significant role played by vitamin B6 in transamination was first postulated by Schlenk and Snell (1) and later con-firmed by a number of investigators (2-4). Among the transaminases that have been identified, those involving aspartic acid and alanine have received the most atten-tion. It has been demonstrated that these are different enzymes and that the activity of these enzymes varies from tissue to tissue, in different fractions of the blood, under circumstances such as stress, preg-nancy, and nutritional deficiency, and in various pathological conditions (4-l 1). As a result of their tests with rats, Cheney et a!. (10) concluded that the transaminases in blood are better indicators of vitamin B6 deprivation than either weight gain or transaminase activity in liver. Marett and Beaton (12) have estab