Question

Some essential mineral nutrients, such as selenium and molybdenum, are required in the human diet in minuscule amounts, thousand of a milligram per day. What kinds of experiments would you have to carry out to show that one of these minerals is required by humans? Why might this be difficult?

Answer 1

Selenium helps human body make special proteins, called antioxidant enzymes while main function of molybedenum is removing toxins, particularly from the metabolism of sulfur containing amino acids.

To prove the requirement of these trace essential nutrients, a clinical trial could be carried out and with effect of presence or absence on human health could be monitored.

Since selenium is prmarily involved in anti-oxidant activity, free radical concentration could be calculated for two groups having presence or absence of selenium.

Molybdenum requiremnet could be checked by calculation of blood methionine in patients with presence or absence of molybenum.

The major difficulty shall be to make sure to provide the food having either only molybedum or selenium deficiency for the patients.