Interest in the glycolytic metabolism of tumors originated in the investigations of Warburg 35 years ago with his observations that malignant neoplasms have a high anaerobic as well as aerobic glycolysis in comparison with other tissues. It has been no doubt proven that there is a difference in the glycolytic metabolism between the tissue of malignant tumor and the others.
Con et Cori approached this problem by studies on the living animal and reported an increase in the systemic blood lactic acid after glucose administration in a rat, mouse and man.
But there has been no definite estimation of the levels of lactic acid in the circulating blood of living animals with malignant tumor. Therefore, the levels of lactic acid in the patients suffering from malignant tumor were measured in this investigation.
Early in the morning, before eating and exercise, 2.0 ml of venous blood taken from the antecubital vein of the patients with malignant tumor and those without malignant tumor, healthy or sick, was collected in the bottle containing 20 mg of Sodium Fluoride.
The determination of the blood lactic acid was performed by Barker-Summerson method using the electrophotometer Lumetron through the green filter of 550 mμ.
As a result of this investigation, the range of lactic acid values in the blood of 38 patients with - malignant tumor was 4.10 to 15.99mg/di. (Average: 10.13±3.38mg/dl.), while that of the control group composed of 10 healthy persons and 15 patients without malignant tumor was 4.10 to 10.25 mg/dl.(Average: 7.54±1.9 mg/dl).
A statistically significant difference (P<0.005) between the malignant tumor patients and control group was found on the levels of the blood lactic acid.
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