Studies on srum glutamic pyruvic transaminase in health and in diseases of the liver.

It has been reported that serum transaminase activity is found to be altered in certain pathological conditions which are associated with necrosis or other type of cellular damage of cardiac, hepatic or skeletal muscle tissues (5, 6 and 12). It may be that damage to the tissue results in release, from the cells, of the traasaminase, which finds its way into the plasma or serum. Wroblewski and La Due (14) studied and compared the activities of glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT) and glutamic pyruvic transaminase (GPT) in different tissue homogenates. The activity of GPT was found to be relatively greater in liver than in other tissues as compared with the activity of GOT. This would perhaps suggest that the serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase (SGPT), might possibly be a more specific index of liver cell damage than the serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (SGO-T), because of its selective concentration in liver tissue. Futhermore it might be suggested that since the cardiac tissue activity of GPT is low, myocardial uecrosis might not be associated with significant alterations of SGP-T activity. A study was undertaken to find out the levels ot SGP-T activity in patients with diseases of the liver, in whom other liver function tests were simultaneously carried out. Normal subjects were also studied for their serum transaminase activity. as a control group for comparison. The results of this study are reported herewith.