A Comparison of the Buffer Value of Bile and Pancreatic Juice Secreted Simultaneously.

Abstract

It is well known that both bile and pancreatic juice play a rôle in neutralizing the acid chyme ejected into the duodenum and that pancreatic juice as a rule is more alkaline (pH 7.8—9.0) 1 , 2 , 3 than hepatic bile (pH 7.4—8.5) 4 , 5 , 6 and that gall bladder bile is acid (pH 5.4—6.9) 4 , 5 but the titration curves and buffer values of bile and pancreatic juice have not been determined and compared.

In doing this it was thought that more comparable results would be obtained by collecting bile and pancreatic juice from the same animal at the same time. So, under aseptic procedure the gall bladder bile was collected by ligating and removing the gall bladder. The common bile duct was then cannulated, the accessory pancreatic duct tied, and the principal pancreatic duct cannulated; both the cannulae in the common bile duct and the pancreatic duct were connected with sterile rubber balloons large enough to hold a 12-hour sample. 6

The combined 24-hour collection of the secretions was measured and 10 cc. amounts titrated with N/10 HC1, and the corresponding pH determined with the quinhydrone electrode. This has been done in 5 dogs so far and a typical result is shown in the accompanying chart. In this chart the solid lines represent bile and the dotted lines represent pancreatic juice from the same dog. The lowest line is the gall bladder bile. The other solid lines are hepatic bile and the numbers on them refer to the days after operation that the secretions were obtained. The pancreatic duct cannula became occluded on the sixth day.

It is evident from these curves and our data that hepatic bile may be as alkaline or even more alkaline than pancreatic juice, and that the 2 act in a more or less compensatory manner, i. e., when the buffer action of one goes up, the other tends to go down.