Abstract
The anemia which develops in rats raised on an iron and copper-free diet is accompanied by marked cardiac hypertrophy and significant chemical changes in the myocardium. A study of the muscle hemoglobin in the hearts of these animals is presented in this paper.
Most of the methods used were described in an earlier report. 1 In the present series, the animals were quickly opened along the mid-line while under light ether anesthesia, a cannula inserted into the inferior vena cava, and the point forced up past the level of the diaphragm. The heart was thus perfused with normal saline containing 5% glucose at 37°C. until it ceased to beat. At this time, the fluid returning from the heart was practically free of blood hemoglobin as indicated by lack of color. The ventricles were then carefully severed from the body at the atrioventricular ring. They were opened immediately, blotted dry, weighed and analyzed for muscle hemoglobin by the procedure described by Whipple. 2 Blood hemoglobin determinations were made by the method of Sahli. There were 14 anemic rats and 15 littermate controls. The results are shown in Table I.
The concentration of muscle hemoglobin in the myocardium is not significantly different in the 2 series. The total amount of muscle hemoglobin is nearly twice as great for the anemic rats, owing to the great hypertrophy present in these cases. It is evident that in spite of the severe anemia, growing rats have the ability to store manufactured muscle hemoglobin in their hearts in amounts not only sufficient to meet the demands of normal heart growth, but indeed to maintain normal muscle hemoglobin concentration during the development of abnormal hypertrophy.
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