Guanidine Content of Blood from Epileptics.

The guanidine content of blood from 18 epileptic men and 16 epileptic women, representing a total of 47 epileptic seizures, was determined by the nitroprusside method of Marston, 1 as modified by Weber, 2 and Major and Weber. 3 These blood samples were drawn near the termination of the seizures, often before the patient had completely recovered consciousness. As all of the epileptic subjects were institutional patients, blood samples from 9 non-epileptic men and 10 non-epileptic women, also inmates of the same institution, were studied by the same method to provide controls against the diet and routine institutional life of the epileptic patients. The blood guanidine data have been summarized in Table I.

From the table the high guanidine content of the blood from these epileptics in seizures is evident. The maximum blood guanidine found in the samples from the non-epileptic cases was 0.48 mg. per 100 cc. of blood, (individual data not presented in detail here), which value was exceeded in 29 of the 47 epileptic cases. The average blood guanidine for the non-epileptics was near 0.2 mg. per 100 cc., which is slightly higher than the average from the non-hypertension cases presented by Major and Weber 3 but is much the same as the normals given by Traut and MacFate. 4 Regardless of the actual value of normal blood guanidine, all but 4 of the 47 epileptic cases had higher blood guanidine than the average of 0.2 mg. per 100 cc. of the comparable non-epileptic cases from the same institution.

While it is not possible to go into the clinical histories of these cases here, neither hypertension nor nephritic conditions, which have been correlated by Major and Weber 3 in certain subjects with high blood guanidine, were found in any of the epileptic subjects reported here.