History
Phenylketonuria (PKU) was one of the earliest recognized inborn errors of metabolism. In populations of European ancestry, it affects about 1 in 13,000 infants. In 1934, Følling discovered that restricting phenylalanine could improve the neurologic function of children with PKU, and within a few years it was established that a diet low in protein from infancy could prevent the mental retardation. Unfortunately, PKU was often not detected until significant brain damage had occurred. The ferric chloride test was unreliable in newborns and even by the 1950s there was no reliable, practical method for mass screening and detection of this disease before harm had occurred.
Robert Guthrie (1916–1995), a bacteriologist and physician at the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo, New York, reported in 1963 the initial version of this assay. Within a decade, newborn screening programs using this test were established in most of the United States and many other countries.
Read more about this topic: Guthrie Test
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)