Galactose Tolerance of Normal and Diabetic Subjects, and the Effect of Insulin upon Galactose Metabolism

It is the purpose of this paper to present the results of aninvestigation of galactose metabolism by determining the galactose content of the blood and urine following the administration of galactose by mouth to human subjects, and by determining the galactose concentration of the blood following the subcutaneous, intravenous, or intraperitoneal administration of galactose to animals. Investigations of galactose metabolism by similar procedures have been carried out by Corley (l), Blanc0 (2), Harding and van Nostrand (3), and Harding and Grant (4). The analytical method used to determine the blood galactose is an application of the procedure of Somogyi (5), in which the fermentable sugar of the blood is removed by treatment with yeast, and of the new Benedict (6) method for determining blood glucose in tungstomolybdic acid filtrates. The urinary galactose was determined by treating the urine with yeast for 3 hour or more, centrifuging the mixture, and titrating the supernatant fluid against Benedict’s quantitative copper reagent.