Comment by nradov
5 hours ago
Could you expand on what makes arsenic an essential micronutrient? What are the clinical signs and symptoms of severe arsenic deficiency? I've never heard of this before.
5 hours ago
Could you expand on what makes arsenic an essential micronutrient? What are the clinical signs and symptoms of severe arsenic deficiency? I've never heard of this before.
IIRC, severe deficiency of arsenic leads to a type of wasting. The precise role is uncertain. Based on animal models the rough estimates for human requirements are similar to selenium.
Humans get enough arsenic from water and other background sources that deficiency is virtually unknown. My understanding is that there was historical anecdotal evidence for rare arsenic deficiency from animal husbandry that caused it to be investigated.
These days they systematically test for the trace micronutrient status of e.g. heavy metals by inducing extreme deficiency using mammal models. Most of the time nothing happens but it is difficult to eliminate the possibility of contamination creating a null signal.
Probably the most surprising element for which they have suggestive evidence of biological necessity is lead.
Could you give us some specific citations for evidence of biological necessity for arsenic and lead? I searched on PubMed but couldn't find anything.
It is damn near impossible to search on Google for this literature today. Fortunately, some of the links have been posted to this site before, which is searchable. :)
Here is the first good reference I could find, which surveys some of the other literature. It mentions lead in rat models.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2246629/
It has no known physiological role in humans. Selenium has similar stuff going on. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_biochemistry]
It’s not hard to figure this stuff out yourself.
It is hard. I did some searches before commenting and couldn't find anything about arsenic deficiency. I don't know much about arsenic biochemistry so could you kindly point us to a good source?
Perhaps not. At the same time, when a person makes a claim, and several (or several hundred) people read it, it seems more efficient to ask the person who made the claim to supply the documentation, rather than making the several (hundred) people all do the looking. The looking does not have to be hard for this to be true.
Also, just in general debate terms, the one who makes a claim is the one who has the burden of substantiating it.