THE INFLUENCE OF IODINE ON THE EXCRETION OF CREATINE IN EXOPHTHALMIC GOITER 1

Abstract

Nornal human adults taking a diet without meat, fish, peas or beans excrete no creatine in the urine. The exceptions to this thus far ob- served are the appearance of small amounts of creatine in women during the menstrual period (1) and the creatinuria in women reported by Denis and Minot (2) following the ingestion of a high protein diet. Creatine is found in the urine of individuals suffering from wasting diseases, starvation, during carbohydrate deprivation, diabetes mellitus, poisoning by phlorhizin, hydrazine, adrenalin and sodium selenite, exophthalmic goiter, fevers and the muscular atrophies and dystro- phies (3). The presence of creatine in the urine in pathological con- ditions is considered evidence of abnormal endogenous nitrogen metab- olism of muscles. Shaffer (4) reports 0.18 gram of creatine nitrogen in the twenty-four-hour urine of patients ill with exophthalmic goiter. Of the several pathological conditions studied by Shaffer only in the post partum period did he encounter values in excess of this. Associ- ated with the abnormal creatine excretion in exophthalmic goiter there was a reduced excretion of creatiniine. Normally the daily ex- cretion of creatinine nitrogen per kilogram of body weight amounts to 7 to 11 mgm., whereas in the cases of goiter only 3 to 6 mgm. are excreted.