THE CREATININ COEFFICIENT IN PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS

Abstract

In the light of the significant role of creatinin excretion in endogenous metabolism, it was deemed that it might prove of some interest to determine the creatinin coefficient in a series of graded, clinically uncomplicated, cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, particularly as there are operative, in this condition, two somewhat opposing factors of undoubted metabolic importance, namely continued pyrexia and progressive wasting of muscle mass. But few cases of pulmonary tuberculosis have been reported in the literature from this point of view, and these show findings both indeterminate and in poor accord. Thus Hofmann, 1 employing a now obsolete procedure of creatinin determination and making no provision as to diet control, reports one advanced, though apparently afebrile case (patient aged 34), in which there was noted a slight decrease of creatinin output—0.496 gm. per twenty-four hours as opposed to his normal value of 0.687 gm. Van Hoogenhyze and Verploegh, 2 on the basis