Reprinted from: The PV Foundation News, Issue 7, Page 5.

Nutritional Research News

   To augument the article on vegetables belonging to the Allium group
presented by Dr. Sarah Brenner in the last newsletter, we will site a
case history presented in the European Journal of Dermatology by
researchers at the Warsaw School of Medicine, Warshaw, Poland, and Keio
University, School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.

   The case presented was one of a 42 year old woman diagnosed with
pemphigus vulgaris who showed no skin lesions, only mouth sores.  During
her first hospitalization, the lesions regressed before any therapy was
introduced.  The woman was discharged and no treatment was instituted.

   The woman was hospitalized three more times with the recurrence of
mouth sores, and each time the lesions regressed before any therapy was
introduced, and she was sent home again without treatment.

   The physicians realized that maybe something in her home was causing
the outbreaks.  She was asked about her diet and said that she did not
eat onions and garlic because she did not like them, but she said that
leeks were a main component of her three meals a day.

   The woman did not believe that the leeks were causing the problem and
refused to give them up, but upon another recurrence, she stopped eating
the leeks.  After her sores cleared up, she returned to eating leeks,
had a recurrence and then saw for herself that the leeks were the
culprit.  She then agreed to eat a leek-free diet.  Her titer count
decreased and eventually became hardly detectable.

   Three months after she continued on a leek-free diet, she was still
clear of lesions.