Distribution of Radioactive Phosphorus in Normal and Diseased Brain Tissue. Experimental and Clinical Observations

Conclusions

1. Traumatic, purulent and ischemic lesions of the brains of cats demonstrate increased contents of radioactive phosphorus following intravenous administration of the isotope when compared with control brain tissue. 2. Fetal cat brain tissues demonstrate higher contents of the isotope in 45 and 48 hours after administration than maternal brain tissue of the same animal. 3. Brain tumor tissue from clinical cases reveals greater deviations above the normal of any pathological nervous tissue studied. When the tissue architecture of the tumor is intact the content of the isotope is higher than in degenerating, softened tissue of the same tumor mass. 4. The distribution of the isotope among the three phosphorus containing fractions of the pathological tissues does not show sufficiently marked alterations from the distribution in control tissues to explain the abnormal increases in total tissue content on the basis of a disproportionate increase of any one isotope-bearing fraction. It is suggested that different mechanisms are at play to explain the increase of isotope in destroyed tissue of the brain as compared with the mechanisms at play in neoplastic tissue. 5. Caution must be employed when utilizing radioactive phosphorus in brain tissue‘to localize or delineate tumor masses by probe methods, for non-tumor tissue may show a differential ratio between normal and abnormal tissue such as to cause errors in interpretation.