Iron metabolism in the cobalt-polycythemic rat.

Although the finding that cobalt can produce a polycythemia in the rat, is well known (l), the mechanism of the hematopoietic action is still obscure. Orten (2) measured the serum bilirubin concentration of normal and cobalt-polycythemic rats, from which he concluded that passive accumulation of red blood cells as a result of a diminished rate of destruction did not occur. Copp (3) found that in rats given 0.1 mg. of cobalt daily the uptake of radioiron in the blood after intraperitoneal administration, as well as the per cent of the dose present in the blood at 24 hours, was almost four times as great as in the control rats. The present study was undertaken to measure the amount of iron utilized per day for red blood cell formation in cobalt-polycythemic rats and the time required for the maturation of the red blood cell in the bone marrow in a manner similar to that which Huff and coworkers (4) used in clinical investigation.