STUDIES IN BLOOD COMPOSITION OF ANIMALS UNDER PATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS II. EXPERIMENTS WITH LUPINES

¹ From the Department of Animal Pathology of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Princeton, New Jersey

1. Young sheep can be fed for two months daily doses of 20 grams of lupine flour without showing any clinical sign of intoxication. Their blood glucose figures are lowered and the blood creatinine is subject to fluctuations in both directions.

2. Hens can stand 25 per cent of lupine flour in the diet for twenty-two days, followed by twenty to forty-nine days of a feed containing 50 per cent of lupine flour. Their blood sugar is lowered, the blood uric acid generally raised, and the blood creatinine remains fairly constant.

3. The eggs of a hen fed a 50 per cent lupine diet proved to be not toxic to white mice for a period of one week.

4. In rabbits subcutaneous injections of sparteine sulphate, one of the toxic alkaloids of lupine seed, causes the blood glucose to fall and the blood creatinine to rise. Adrenalin hypodermically is capable of counterbalancing the hypoglycemic effect of sparteine.

5. In hens intramuscular intoxication with sparteine sulphate has a lowering effect on blood glucose, but does not affect the blood creatinine.

6. A drop in blood glucose seems to be one of the primary symptoms of intoxication by lupine alkaloids.