Mechanism of Erythrocyte Destruction in the Burned Rat

¹ From the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco, California

The rate of disappearance of Fe⁵⁹-tagged erythrocytes made by burned and control rats has been measured in both normal and in rats with a 25% body area burn. The erythrocytes made by a burned rat have a mean survival time of 9 days when injected into burned rats. The same cells injected into normal rats have a mean survival time of 42 days. When erythrocytes made by a normal rat were injected into a burned rat the mean survival time was 18 days compared with 40 days when the same cells were injected into unburned controls. These data indicate an increased rate of red cell destruction in the burned rat. As the erythrocytes made by a burned rat do not display an abnormally short survival time in the normal rat and since an increased rate of destruction of erythrocytes is observed when cells from either normal or burned rats are injected into burned rats, it appears that the process of red cell destruction is an abnormality initiated by the burn.