Cobalamin deficiency in elderly patients

Emmanuel Andrès and colleagues1 state that the classic treatment for deficiency of vitamin B₁₂ is injections of crystalline vitamin B₁₂ and that an oral treatment has “recently” been devised. However, oral treatment of pernicious anemia was described in 1926 by George Minot and William Murphy.2 Indeed, in 1934, they (along with George Whipple) received the Nobel Prize for this work. Not until 1948 did Karl Folkers and his coworkers at Merck succeed in purifying crystalline vitamin B₁₂.3