Metabolism of Bromobenzene in Growing Dogs and Mice Maintained on Adequate Diets. ∗

Abstract

Monohalogen benzenes, when fed, are excreted in the urine of adult dogs, 1 cats, 2 rats, 3 and rabbits, 4 partly as ethereal sulfates, partly as mercapturic acids. Hele, 5 in an attempt to compare the synthesis of mercapturic acid in dogs and pigs, has come to the conclusion that the pig does not synthesize mercapturic acid readily. Hele 5 used young growing pigs as experimental animals in comparing the metabolism of bromobenzene in pigs to that in the adult dog. Inasmuch as Abderhalden 6 believes that the synthesis of mercapturic acid is limited in the animal body by the need of that animal for sulfur for reactions more essential than the detoxication of bromobenzene, it seemed probable that the limitation of synthesis of mercapturic acid in the pig as found by Hele 5 was due to the fact that he employed young growing pigs instead of the adult animal. White and Jackson 7 have adduced evidence which seems to indicate that bromobenzene, when fed to growing rats, affects the utilization by the animals of cystine necessary for normal growth. These workers have not, however, demonstrated that mercapturic acid was actually synthesized by the growing rat.

As far as we know, the metabolism of bromobenzene in the growing dog or growing white mouse has not been studied previously. Pending the development of the method for the estimation of mercapturic acids in the urine, now in progress, we used the changes in the partition of urinary sulfur produced by bromobenzene feeding to animals, and the isolation of mercapturic acid from the urine as the criterion of the synthesis of mercapturic acid by the growing dog and mouse, while maintained on adequate diets. 8