Studies on the Glutathione Content of the Blood in Nutritional Anemia*

In a study of the copper content of the blood in nutritional anemia (1) it was observed that in pigs depleted of their bodily copper stores the copper of the blood falls to extremely low values and that upon feeding sufficient amounts of copper it is restored very rapidly to normal levels. It was suggested then that with a low copper concentration in the blood, the medium surrounding the young blood cells in the bone marrow would not possess the right physical and chemical properties to permit formation of hemoglobin and maturation of erythrocytes. Clinical observations (quoted in (1)) established that in various conditions of anemia, i.e. with increased demand for formation of hemoglobin and of erythrocytes, the copper content of the blood increases. Under similar conditions, in hemorrhagic or in phenylhydrazine anemia of rabbits (2-6), and in various forms of human anemia (2, 7, S), the glutathione content of the erythrocytes was found to be increased. Other considerations pointed also to a possible correlation between the copper content of the blood and the level of reduced and oxidized glutathione in the blood. Tompsett (9) suggested that part of the copper inside the red blood cells may occur as the cuprous mercaptide of glutathione. The oxidation of reduced glutathione is a metallic catalysis (lo), probably