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LIVER FUNCTION TESTS IN CHRONIC RELAPSING VIVAX MALARIA 1

1945; American Society for Clinical Investigation; Volume: 24; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1172/jci101643

1558-8238

Stuart W. Lippincott, Lester D. Ellerbrook, Wm. B. Hesselbrock, Harry H. Gordon, L. S. Gottlieb, Alexander Marble,

Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment

Hepatic function in chronic relapsing malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax and treated princi- pally by atabrine has been investigated at Harmon General Hospital in 317 soldiers.This study seemed advisable because of previous reports that impairment of liver function may occur in both naturally-acquired (1 to 3) and induced malaria (4).Several types of tests were performed on our patients both during recurrent attacks and at various intervals afterwards.Most of these same tests were also performed on healthy individuals to determine whether in our laboratory the meth- ods gave normal ranges of values corresponding to those found in the literature.This made it pos- sible to compare the findings in our patients with those of our healthy control series, as well as with the results of other investigators.The liver function tests used may be grouped roughly into 3 categories: (a) those in which hepatic dysfunction is suspected when abnormal values are found-bromsulfalein, cephalin floccu- lation, galactose tolerance and hippuric acid tests; (b) those in which an abnormal value may be as- sociated with increased red blood cell destruction and/or hepatic dysfunction-icterus index, serum bilirubin concentration, and urine urobilinogen concentration; and (c) quantitative determina- tions of some constituents of blood serum occa- sionally found to yield abnormal results in persons with hepatic disease-albumin, globulin, total pro- tein, cholesterol and phosphatase.METHODS 1. Bromsulfalein (5): The amount of dye injected in- travenously was 5 mgm.per kgm. of body weight.The permanent standards used were supplied by Hynson, Westcott and Dunning.Since the standards were pre- pared for the 2 mgm.test, the calculations were made by dividing the readings obtained by 2.5.