Influence of anemia and hyperemia on the growth of sarcoma in the white rat

Abstract

From previous experimentation, it becomes evident that certain physiological and pathological factors on the part of the organism, as starvation, pregnancy, the feeding of various salts, racial differences, and so on, exert a decided influence upon the growth of transplanted tumor tissue. Moreschi in his experiments in 1909 concluded that under-feeding and starvation of the animal predisposes to retardation of the transplanted mouse carcinoma. Cluett, Mercier, and others have shown that during pregnancy the progress of the growth of the tumor which may be at a standstill shortly before the ending of pregnancy, is very much lessened, and after labor and during lactation may even recede, i. e., that the growth of one tissue exerts an unfavorable influence upon the artificially transplanted tissue growth of another.

Negré, Borrell's pupil, was able to control the percentage of takes by increasing or diminishing the salt contents of the fluids and tissues of the body. This proves conclusively that the subcutaneously transplanted tumor is dependent upon a great many, as yet unknown, conditions of the host, and also upon its metabolic changes.

The present experiments were undertaken with a view to studying the effect of tumor growth in a locally induced anemic and hyperemic condition in the white rat. The lower extremity of the rat was rendered partially anemic by ligation of the femoral artery at the saphenous opening, and a few hours subsequent, it was observed that the extremity became slightly paler than the opposite one, though there was no evident lack of circulation; and twenty-four, forty-eight, and seventy-two hours after this induced anemia, Ehrlich's rat sarcoma was inoculated subcutaneously into the leg. This experiment was performed on forty animals; of these thirty-three survived four to ten weeks, and in only six animals, or eighteen per cent., did the tumor grow, and then only to a small size.