Blood glutathione levels in rheumatoid arthritis.

It is well known that sulphydryl (SH) groups are necessary for the activity of important enzyme systems. Recent work by Rall and Lehninger (1952) indicates further, that the SH groups of glutathione play a direct part in electron carriage in cellular respiration. In view of the lesions found inthe skeletal muscle in rheumatoid arthritis (Freund and others, 1945; Desmarais and others, 1948), we decided to ascertain whether ithe availability of the SH compounds of blood bore any relation to these rheumatoid changes. Preliminary experiments indicated that fluctuations in serum protein SH were too variable to relate to the clinical progress of the disease; this report concerns the glutathione content of the blood cells as this alone appeared to show some variation from normal.