Vitamin B12 can help the body fight infection by parasitical organisms such as this one.

Living organisms are pretty complex.  Humans and other complex organisms have all sorts of built-in redundancies—signalling mechanisms and molecular responses that will stop in to perform if a primary chain is broken.  It also works the other way around: a molecule may serve one primary function but it will also serve secondary purposes. This 1985 paper provides an example, in the case of vitamin B12.  Does the vitamin help fight parasites, for example?  Researchers at Morgan State University and Howard University asked that question for rats.  They weighed the animals’ feed with a scientific digital scale (also called a laboratory balance) to determine the change in feeding habits and weight gain for B12 -deficient and normal rats infected with a microscopic parasite.

For further information visit www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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