ABSTRACT
Infantile cardiovascular lesions that have caused early serious disease or death and that can contribute to the common arterial and cardiac diseases of later life have been studied for roles of nutritional or genetic factors. The risk of producing hypercalcemia by calcemic treatment of hypocalcemia in the presence of hypomagnesemia was cautioned against in an early study of magnesium malabsorption. Proliferative lesions of the endothelium that narrow or obliterate the lumina were described in diabetics’ intramural small coronary arteries in I960. The dietary intake of chromium is sub-optimal in the American diet, its loss is increased during pregnancy, its deficiency has been linked to maturity-onset diabetes and arterial disease, and its supplementation has increased high-density lipid levels. Interrelationships between magnesium and vitamin E are indicated also by precipitation of signs and lesions of magnesium deficiency in vitamin E-deficient normal rats and by prevention of respiratory decline of (hepatic) mitochondria from vitamin E-deficient rats by administration of magnesium.
