The Global Selenium Agenda

Abstract

Rapid increases have taken place in our awareness of the importance of selenium in human health and disease during the last decade. In 1979, two reports, one from New Zealand and the other from the People’s Republic of China, described conditions related to human selenium deficiency. The New Zealand report concerned a total parenteral nutrition patient whose muscle pain and tenderness responded to selenium treatment (1). This patient was considered to be the first clinical case supporting the essential role of selenium in human nutrition. The report from China presented evidence that Keshan disease (see below) is associated with low selenium status (2). This experiment of nature is the result of the selenium-impoverished soils located in certain regions of China. On the other hand, another Chinese paper that appeared in 1983 described an outbreak of endemic human selenosis due to the consumption of foods that contained toxic amounts of selenium (3). The selenium in that episode leached from selenium-rich coal into the soil and was then available for uptake by food crops.