The Effect of Nephrectomy and Suprarenalectomy in the Rat on Resistance.

Abstract

There is abundant evidence that the suprarenal gland, in some manner still unknown, plays an important rôle in the defensive mechanism of the body against poisons. Lewis 1 , 2 , 3 in 1921, established the fact that suprarenalectomized rats are killed by much smaller doses of a variety of poisons than are normal animals. These experiments have been confirmed by Scott, 4 , 5 Marine and his co-workers, 6 , 7 Belding and Wyman, 8 and more recently Jaffe. 9 Stewart and Rogoff, 10 and Rogoff and his coworkers, 11 , 12 while clearly showing in their experiments that suprarenalectomized animals have lowered resistance, believe that this is not specifically due to loss of suprarenal substance. They 10 , 11 argue as follows: Since the general mortality following double suprarenalectomy in rats obtained by various workers, is about 50 per cent. and since approximately 90 per cent of this mortality occurs between the 5th and 15th day following the operation, therefore any increased sensitiveness found between the 5th and 15th day is due to the moribund state of the animal. This conclusion ignores the well established fact that while 50 per cent of rats survive indefinitely the removal of both suprarenals, practically 100 per cent are killed by a dose of poison (typhoid vaccine), far below the minimum lethal dose for normal animals, and that no other operative procedure has so far been found in which a comparable lowering of resistance follows.

It is our purpose to report further experiments in support of the view that doubly suprarenalectomized rats while still surviving in good condition, have markedly lowered resistance, and also to report experiments showing that rats made truly moribund by nephrectomy do not show a comparable lowered resistance. We, therefore, have studied the resistance of nephrectomized rats to small doses of standard typhoid vaccine.