Insulin Activity of Cord Plasma

Abstract

IT has been shown by histological methods¹ that the islets of Langerhans form a much larger proportion of the pancreatic tissue in fœtuses and newborn infants than they do in adults, and Fisher and Scott² extracted relatively more insulin from the pancreas of the fœtal and newborn calf than from the same organ in later life. Hartmann and Jaudon³ found that the injection of insulin into newborn human infants led to a moderate fall of blood sugar, and Villee⁴ has stated that the fœtal tissues of man respond in vitro, like those of adults, to the presence of added insulin by an increased utilization and oxidation of glucose. The newborn infant, therefore, would appear to have abundant islet tissue and to respond normally to insulin; and in keeping with all this is the well-known fact that newborn infants may have very low fasting blood-sugars⁵.