RETICULOCYTOSIS IN THE GUINEA PIG FOLLOWING INJECTIONS OF GASTRIC JUICE AND CONGO RED1

Various investigators have stated that liver ex-tracts, effective in the treatment of pernicious anemia, cause a rise in the number of reticulocytes in the guinea pig (1, 2, 3, 4). The route of ad-ministration (intraperitoneal, subcutaneous, oral) does not affect the type of response nor the height of the reticulocyte rise, but it appears to change slightly the time of the peak of the reticulocytosis. Jacobson (2) defines a positive response as " a rise of the reticulocyte count to at least 2.0 per cent on two successive days, within 6 days after the administration of the substance to be tested." According to his data it falls on the 4th to 7th day following the injection. All the substances tested by him were administered intraperitoneally. Landsberg and Thompson (3) who daily injected commercial liver extract subcutaneously in the abdominal wall obtained a reticulocytosis with peaks between the 5th and 11th days following the beginning of the treatment, most of them fall-ing on the 8th day or later. Miller and Rhoads (4), administering liver extract orally, found the maximum reticulocytosis occurred between the 7th and 12th days. These data indicate that the anti-anemic substance, when injected intraperitoneally, produced a reticulocyte peak at an earlier time than when given either subcutaneously in the ab-dominal wall or orally. Liver extracts are not the only substances which cause this reticulocytosis in guinea pigs. Miller and Rhoads (4) found that oral administration of extracts of rice polishings and vegex, when in-cubated with gastric juice, will also give a similar response. The same is also true of gastric juice incubated with beef muscle, with or without pep-sin, provided the gastric juice is not heated to 90° C. before intraperitoneal administration (2). The following report deals with the reticulocyte response of guinea pigs to the intramuscular ad-ministration of gastric juice from patients wit