Blood plasma pepsinogen in acute infections in infants and children.

Abstract

At present, the physiologic and clinical significance of blood plasma pepsinogen is not known and awaits further investigation. Under normal conditions, in normal persons including infants and children, 1-6 the blood plasma pepsinogen concentrations have been shown to vary within certain limits and to be independent of food, ordinary psychic influences, and practically all agents which usually stimulate or depress the gastric juice concentration of pepsinogen and pepsin. All the factors responsible for the magnitude of variability of blood plasma pepsinogen in the normal subjects are unknown. There is some circumstantial and inferential evidence that the anterior pituitary-adrenal cortical system may influence the production of the endogenous or endocrine fraction of pepsinogen by the peptic cells of the gastric mucosa 3,7-25 and therefore the levels of blood plasma pepsinogen. Since in acute infections there may be anatomical or functional disturbances of the adrenal gland or both, 26-30 it was thought