Abstract
Roe's 1 method for determining fructose in blood, an application of the resorcinol method, has been applied to 39 specimens of spinal fluid from 34 human subjects. The average concentration found was 4.1 mg. per 100 cc., while determinations on blood and plasma gave values of from 1 to 2 mg. per 100 cc. The substance which gives the test is completely destroyed when 2 cc. of spinal fluid is incubated with 0.5 cc. of yeast for 10 minutes, or when sterile spinal fluid is inoculated with B. coli communis or B. coli communior and incubated for 24 hours. It, therefore, has the biological properties of fructose and glucose, but not of sucrose.
The orcinol compound formed from dilute spinal fluid has the same absorption spectrum as that from fructose. When strong glucose solutions were treated by the technique a somewhat different spectrum, with relatively less absorption in the green portion of the spectrum, was obtained. Undiluted spinal fluid, or corresponding mixtures of glucose and fructose, gave similar spectra.
Additional evidence that the color was not given by the glucose in spinal fluid was obtained by repeated simultaneous analyses of dilute glucose solutions and serial dilutions of spinal fluid, which showed that only a small part of the color developed could have come from the glucose present.
It seems improbable that phosphoric acid esters of sugars could explain the finding, for (1) there is not sufficient organic phosphorus in spinal fluid to account for more than a trace of the “fructose” found, 2 and (2) when the method of Cori and Cori 3 was applied to spinal fluid only a small fraction—approximately 2%—of the total color-producing substance was precipitated.
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