The effect of starvation, phloridzin, thyroid, adrenaline, insulin and pituitrin on the distribution of glycogen in the rat

Abstract

THE effect of starvation, phloridzin and diabetes on the main glycogen stores in the liver and skeletal muscles was early established and latterly the effects of insulin and adrenaline on these organs have been intensively studied. A few investigations have been concerned with other organs, such as the heart in diabetes, but both early and recent work has been confined mainly to the liver and skeletal muscles or to the total glycogen content of the body. Thus, although glycogen has been demonstrated in every tissue, we can find no record of an attempt to follow its simultaneous changes in a number of representative organs, and we have made this the subject of the present investigation. Besides the liver and skeletal muscles, therefore, we have studied the heart, the stomach (as representing involuntary muscle), the spleen and the kidney, and a few observations have also been made on the brain, uterus and testicle. The uterus, containing as it does less non-muscular tissue than the stomach, might have been a better representative of involuntary muscle, but for routine purposes it is too small and its use would have limited us to female rats. The kidney and spleen were selected as non-muscular organs with no specialised "glycogen function" such as the liver possesses.