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

The occurrence of copper in the blood of man and various animals has been known for a long time but until recently most of the analyses for blood copper were made inbidental to other studies. The recorded observations on this subject have been summarized in the papers by Locke et al. (l), Sarata (i), Roncato and Bassani (3), and Tompsett (4). With the discovery of the essential nature of copper for hemoglobin formation (5) the analysis of animal organs and tissues for copper has assumed :lew significance and during the last few years attempts have been made to study systematically the copper content of the blood of man and animals in normal and pathological conditions. Several observations are recorded in the literature about the changes of the copper content of the blood in various conditions of anemia (1, S-11), but, as far as we know, no data have been published on the changes in the copper content of the blood of animals suffering from nutritional anemia under well controlled conditions. Because in recovery from severe nutritional anemia the bone marrow is in a state of maximum activity, this condition should be unusually favorable for studying the copper content of the blood during rapid hematopoiesis. Our studies on the copper content of tissues and organs of anemic pigs provided excellent material for copper analyses of the blood and made it possible to correlate the results obtained from the analyses of the various organs and tissues.