Specificity of zinc pathway through the body: homeostatic considerations

¹ Medical Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, Long Island, New York

Various tissues of the bodies of mice as well as various intracellular organelles of mouse liver cells showed distinct individuality relative to the time course of Zn⁶⁵ distribution after intraperitoneal injection. When loss of Zn⁶⁵ was accelerated by means of feeding of a zinc salt, the partition of this isotope among both organs and intracellular organelles remained unaffected. When, on the other hand, normal absorption was bypassed by intraperitoneal injection of a zinc salt, the distribution of Zn⁶⁵ was perturbed. Thus it seems that the homeostatic controls discussed earlier (Am. J. Physiol. 202:359, 1962) are operative over the entire zinc pathway only when the absorbtive and the excretory mechanisms are functioning together. Cadmium feeding, in contrast to zinc feeding, did influence the distribution of Zn⁶⁵, as did also intraperitoneally administered cadmium. Cadmium feeding also induced an aberrant concentration of nondialyzable total nitrogen among the liver cell organelles.

Key Words: diets • cadmium • intracellular organelles • isotope partition

Submitted on August 19, 1963