GLYCOGENIC INFILTRATION 437 



and Wolff believes that the glycogen seen in leucocytes represents 

 normal glycogen made insoluble through injury. This may explain 

 why the leucocytes in an infected area may give iodin reactions when 

 the leucocytes in the circulating blood do not. 



Locke gives the occurrence of this abnormal iodin staining of the 

 leucocytes (termed iodophilia) as follows: "Septic conditions of all 

 kinds, including septicemia, abscesses, and local sepsis (except in the 

 earliest stages), appendicitis accompanied by abscess formation or per- 

 itonitis, general peritonitis, empyema, pneumonia, pyonephrosis, sal- 

 pingitis with severe inflammation or abscess formation, tonsillitis, 

 gonorrheal arthritis, and hernia or acute intestinal obstruction where 

 the bowel has become gangrenous, have invariably given a positive 

 iodophilia, and by its absence all these cases can be ruled out in diag- 

 nosis. In other words, no septic condition of any severity can be 

 present without a positive reaction. Furthermore, the disappearance 

 of the glycogen granules in the leucocytes in from twenty-four to 

 forty-eight hours following crisis with frank resolution in pneumonia, 

 and the thorough drainage of pus in septic cases, is of considerable 

 importance." Clinical experience, however, seems not to have ac- 

 corded any constant significance to iodophilia.* 



In exudates glycogen is found in the leucocytes as long as they 

 retain their vitality, but disappears soon after retrogressive changes 

 begin; hence it is not usually present in old sterile pus. Loeper^ 

 made quantitative estimates of the glycogen in exudates, finding from 

 0.59-0.62 gram per Liter in cellular pneumococcus pleural effusion, 

 0.25 gm. in cellular tuberculous effusion, but only traces in serous 

 tuberculous effusion and in an old tuberculous pyothorax. A pneu- 

 monic lung contained 0.85 gm. of glj^cogen per kilo, and traces were 

 found in pneumonic sputum and in the contents of tuberculous cavi- 

 ties. It is very abundant in tuberculous sputum, as much as 2 to 3 per 

 cent, in advanced stages, but absent in bronchial catarrh; in pneu- 

 monia 0.05 per cent, was found, in putrid bronchitis 0.25 per cent. 

 (Pozzilli). When glycogen solution (1 per cent.) is injected into the 

 peritoneal cavity, the endothelial cells and invading leucocytes be- 

 come loaded with glycogen granules. 



Glycogenic Infiltration in Diabetes. — Although in diabetes 

 the chief normal storehouses of glycogen, the hver and muscles, are 

 either poor in or free from glycogen, yet in other tissues in diabetes 

 the most marked accumulations of glycogen are found, the granules 

 frequently fusing in the cells into droplets larger than the nucleus. 

 When dissolved out in ordinary microscopic preparations, the clear 

 round space left is exactly hke the space left by a fat-droplet, except 

 that the margins show a tendency to take the basic stain for some 

 unknown reason. In even the most extreme cases, however, the nucleus 



* See Bernicot, Jour. Path, and Bact., 190G (11),' 304. 

 » Arch. M6d. Exp., 1902 (14), 576. 



