Erythrocyte osmotic fragility in hyperthermia-susceptible swine.

Anaesthetic-induced malignant hyperpyrexia in humans appears to result from some intrinsic abnormality of muscle (Satnick, 1969; Harrison et aL, 1970; King, Denborough and Zapf, 1972). Evidence points to this defect being in the sarcoplasmic reticulum (Kalow et al., 1970). A certain strain of Landrace pigs manifests a similar condition and has been used as an animal experimental model for the investigation of various aspects of the disease and trials of therapeutic measures (Berman et al., 1970; Harrison, 1971). While taking blood specimens for various investigations from such hyperthermia-susceptible pigs, we observed that more often than not these specimens were markedly haemolysed. This observation prompted us to investigate the erythrocyte osmotic fragility of these pigs.