Distribution of materno-fetus materno-suckling transfer of tritium after single injection of tritiated water in mice.

The metabolism and transfer of tritium from pregnant mice to fetus after injection of tritiated water intraperitoneally was investigated in this paper. The study was composed of three experiments. 1. Pregnant mice were injected with tritium water on the first day of pregnancy, in order to obtain a transfer coefficient of tritium from pregnant mice to fetus through placenta. 2. Pregnant mice were injected with tritiated water on the first day of parturition to study the transfer of tritium via mother milk from nursing mice to the baby-animals. 3. Pregnant mice were injected with tritiated water in different periods of gestation. The results showed that tritiated water was uniformly distributed in all of the tissues measured, including placenta, fetal membrane and amniotic fluid in experiment 1. No effect of placentas on tritium transfer from pregnant mice to fetus was found. Concentration of tritium in the baby's tissues was evidently higher than that in the pregnant mice in experiments 2 and 3, and the transfer coefficient in experiments 2 and 3 was generally higher than that in experiment 1.