BIOCHEMICAL STUDIES ON ACUTE HYDRAZINE TOXICITY IN MICE.
Abstract
Two-dimensional paper chromatographic methods were employed to study the changes produced in amino acid distribution in tissues of normal mice, mice treated with hydrazine, and mice pretreated with protective amino acids before injection with hydrazine. The data suggest that the symptoms of acute hydrazine toxicity do not coincide with any major effects on carbohydrate or amino acid metabolism of brain but do occur at a time when significant changes are noted in amino acid distribution in liver. Particular attention was paid to the area of arginine metabolism. Although arginine injection, itself, produced only an increase in ornithine content in the liver, when arginine was followed in 30 minutes by the administration of hydrazine there were marked increases in both ornithine and citrulline levels. In no instance was there any evidence of the accumulation of argininosuccinic acid. The data were tentatively interpreted to indicate that under ordinary conditions the rate-limiting step in the ornithine cycle of liver may be the carbamylation of ornithine, but that in hydrazine-poisoned animals the condensation raction of citrulline with aspartic acid to give argininosuccinic acid might become rate-limitin. The significance of this fining is under further investigation, as well as the possibility that changes observed in other ninhydrinreactive constituents in the livers of hydrazine-poisoned animals might be secondary to the inhibition of the above reaction. Lipid analyses of livers of control and hydrazine-treaed mice showed that no significant abnormalities occurred in the distributions of the individual constituents as a result of hydrazine injection at a time that marked changes in amino acid content were noted. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1966
- Accession Number
- AD0635111
Entities
People
- Daisy G. Simonsen
- Eugene Roberts