The composition of the liver lipids of sheep and the effect of early sporidesmin poisoning.

Facial eczema, a disease of sheep and, to a lesser extent, of cattle, has long been known in the North Island, New Zealand. The disease is contracted by grazing in pastures infected with the fungus Pithomyces chartarum (Commonwealth Mycological Institute Herbarium no. 74473). Synge & White (1959) isolated from cultures of this fungus a metabolic product which they named sporidesmin. Crystalline sporidesmin was prepared (Done, Mortimer, Taylor & Russell, 1961; Ronaldson, Taylor, White & Abraham, 1963) and experimental poisoning of normal sheep was found to be similar to field cases of facial eczema in sheep (Done, Mortimer & Taylor, 1960). Publications on the experimental sporidesmin poisoning of sheep have dealt with clinical and post-mortem observations (Mortimer & Taylor, 1962), with biochemical changes in some serum constituents (Done, Mortimer & Taylor, 1962), with haematological and liver-function disturbances (Mortimer, 1962), and with histological and histochemical observations (Mortimer, 1963). The pathological and biochemical changes that