Influence of Diet on Intoxication with Phenol and Cyanide

Abstract

The influence of diet on resistance to disease and to various intoxications has been recently reviewed. 1 , 2 The rôle of the vitamins has been extensively studied, but relatively little attention has been paid to the proportions of protein, carbohydrate and fat in the diet. From available reports it would appear that in some conditions one of these foodstuffs possesses an advantage, and in other conditions another. Many of these studies are of doubtful value since the vitamin factor was inadequately controlled. The present work was undertaken to compare the effects of diets high in protein, carbohydrate or fat on certain intoxications for which a definite detoxication mechanism is known. This report deals with 2 such poisons—phenol, which is detoxicated in part as an ethereal sulfate and in part in combination with glycuronic acid, and cyanide, which is in part detoxicated by conversion into thiocyanate.

Plan of Study Young rats from a mixed albino and hooded Norwegian colony, weighing 60 to 70 g, were placed in separate cages and given diets varying in their content of protein, carbohydrate and fat. Littermates were divided equally in the various experimental groups. After an interval varying from 10 to 24 days on the test diet they were injected subcutaneously with a 5% aqueous solution of phenol or a 0.1% solution of NaCN freshly made. The mortality of these animals was then compared and contrasted with similar animals on a stock diet. The composition of the experimental diet is given in Table I. The stock diet had the following composition: yellow ground corn, 57.0; whole milk powder, 25.0; linseed oil meal, 12.0; crude casein. 3.7; alfalfa meal, 1.5; NaCl, 0.4, and CaCO₃, 0.4. The mortality of 92 animals given phenol and 194 animals given cyanide is given in Tables II and III.