SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS. 



Abstracts of Communications. 

 Eighty-sixth meeting. 



New York Post-Graduate Medical School, November 21, 1917. 

 President Gies in the chair. 



116 (1294) 

 A blood sugar tolerance test. 

 By N. W. Janney and V. I. Isaacson. 



[From the Montefiore Home and Hospital.} 



Various objections may be made to methods now in vogue for 

 sugar tolerance determinations which depend on the appearance 

 of sugar in the urine. Much more reliable, instructive and delicate 

 results can be obtained by a study of the hyperglycemic response 

 of the blood to ingested sugar. When pure glucose is administered 

 in amounts equal to if gm. per kgm. body weight in 40 per cent, 

 aqueous solution to fasting patients, alimental absorption is so 

 regular that a normal hyperglycemic curve can be established. 

 The blood sugar reattains its fasting level i| to 2 hours after 

 the sugar is taken. The oral method of administration is therefore 

 much more certain than has been supposed. 



For clinical purposes the test is carried out by first deter- 

 mining by Epstein's modification of the Lewis and Benedict 

 method, the blood sugar of a patient who has fasted over night, 

 then administering the sugar drink as prepared above, with the 

 addition of the juice of a lemon and again determining the blood 

 sugar at the end of two hours. In normal subjects the blood sugar 

 has by this time returned to its fasting level. If hyperglycemia still 

 persists, the blood sugar tolerance is lowered. This is the simplest 

 form to which the technique is reducible. We prefer to make 

 several half hourly or hourly observations of the blood sugar follow - 



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