Some Experiments on Reducing Reaction of Cerebro-Spinal Fluid.

Abstract

Benedict's copper method for determining blood sugar1 has been applied to the study of a considerable series of spinal fluid specimens. The values obtained agree almost exactly with published results obtained by the technique of Folin and Wu. A series of direct comparisons described by Lyttle and Hearn2 and confirmed by a few experiments in our own series showed that the difference was approximately 3 mg. %, expressed in terms of glucose. The Folin method gave the slightly higher values. It seems probable that the non-glucose reducing compounds which cause rather marked differences in the sugar values in whole blood and plasma do not enter the spinal fluid in appreciable amounts.Since the compounds which reduce the “uric acid reagents” in acid solutions, but which are not precipitated by silver lactate are supposed to be in part responsible for these differences in blood, studies were carried out to demonstrate their presence in or absence from the spinal fluid. They either were absent, or were present in...