The Inverse Relation Between Inorganic and Lipoid Phosphorus in Blood of Rabbits.

Abstract

In a recent paper, 1 attention was called to the fact that, among rabbits living out of doors, the inorganic phosphorus of serum and the lipoid phosphorus of whole blood show wide variations with a high negative coefficient of correlation, −0.794 ± .09. The curve for inorganic phosphorus over a period of 12 months was almost a mirror image of the curve for lipoid phosphorus (Fig. 1).

Additional experiments were performed for the purpose of testing the influence of light on this relation. Inorganic phosphorus of serum and lipoid phosphorus of whole blood were studied on 4 groups of rabbits, one of which was kept in the open laboratory, another was exposed continually to Cooper Hewitt light, and the 2 other groups were kept in the dark; one of these was irradiated for one hour daily with a quartz-mercury are lamp at a distance of 4.5 meters. The observations covered a period of 4 months.

The irradiated animals showed a high inorganic and a low lipoid phosphorus while the 3 other groups showed a lower inorganic and a higher lipoid phosphorus. But, the variations were such that, in all cases, the sum of the mean values for inorganic and lipoid phosphorus were nearly constant.

The correlation coefficients were negative in all cases but were of a low order for all except the ultra-violet group.

Of the 6 groups of animals in which the relation between inorganic and lipoid phosphorus has been studied, all have shown evidence of an inverse relation with a tendency to maintain a constant sum of the 2 forms. In only 2 cases, however, has the relation been sufficiently close to give a correlation coefficient of a high order; animals exposed to unfiltered sunlight and those irradiated with the quartz-mercury are gave high coefficients, while with others the correlation was low.