Abstract
Early in the course of a study of the blood iodine levels in various disorders, it became apparent that patients with myeloid leukemia differed from those with leukemia of the lymphatic type in respect to their blood iodine.
An elevation of the blood iodine in a case of lymphatic leukemia was reported by Veil and Sturm. 1 Curtis and his associates have stated 2 , 3 that the blood iodine is increased in both lymphatic and myeloid leukemia, but in one case of chronic myeloid leukemia in whom the urinary loss of iodine was studied the blood iodine was approximately normal. 4 Dassen and del Castillo 5 found a high blood iodine in 2 cases of myeloid leukemia. Stevens, 6 using a method similar to the one employed by us found a normal value for the blood iodine in one case of lymphatic leukemia. Summarizing, it is fair to say that the prevailing impression, based on some half dozen cases in the literature, seems to be that the blood iodine is elevated in leukemia regardless of type.
We have made blood iodine determinations according to the method of Trevorrow and Fashena 7 on 17 patients with leukemia. Twelve of these were of the lymphatic type. The results are shown in Table I where the cases are arranged in descending scale according to the blood iodine level. Normal values with this method in our hands range from 3.5 to 6.0γ.
On reference to Table I, it will be noted that in the myeloid cases the blood iodine tends to be normal or below, while in the lymphatic type the 1-t.lood iodine is normal or high. With one exception (F. de G.) there is no overlapping of the two groups.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.