[Copper metabolism under the disturbed circulation of the liver (Eck's fistula) in dogs. The relation between copper content and histologic changes in the brain (author's transl)].

The relation between copper content and histologic changes in the brain under disturbed copper metabolism was studied. In this experiment, three groups of mongrel dogs were used, i.e. (1) Copper administration only, (2) Copper administration with Eck's fistula, (3) Normal control. The copper content in each brain tissue was measured by the atomic absorption spectrophotometry and routine histologic preparations with some special stains were examined. Following results were obtained. (1) In the group of longstanding copper administration, there were no remarkable histologic changes in the brain, and the significant increase of copper content was not demonstrated in the cortex, medulla and basal ganglia. (2) The group of copper administration with Eck's fistula was divided into two subgroups by the presence or absence of icterus. (a) Without Icterus: Diffuse gliosis and type II Alzheimer's neuroglia were observed and copper content in the brain increased up to 1.8 fold of that of normal control. (b) With Icterus: The histologic changes which were observed in the non-icteric group were more severe especially in the brain stem containing vacuolar degeneration, shrinkage and ghost appearance of the nerve cells, hemorrhages and demyelination, but there were no marked histologic changes in cortex and medulla. The copper content of the brian increased up to 2 fold or more of that of normal control. Copper was not demonstrated histochemically in all groups. The copper content in the cortex and basal ganglia was almost the same but that of medulla was half as much as that of the formers in every group of this experiment. The difference of the copper content between cortex which had no remarkable histologic changes, and basal ganglia which had aforementioned severe changes, was not proved, and also the difference between the groups with icterus and without icterus was not demonstrated. The copper content did not always correlate with the severity of the histologic changes. From these results, it can be suggested that copper does not play a significant role in pathogenesis of specific histologic changes of the brain.