
decrease in serum and urinary phosphorus in man
in the course of pyrotherapy
during the fever
peak occurring a few hours after the in-
jection, urinary phosphorus (up) dis-
appears entirely.  this fact cannot be
accounted for by the parallel decrease in
gfr, because serum phosphorus level
(sp) does not increase (as it would be
expected to, should retention occur) but
on the contrary, it, too, declines to a
marked degree.
the possibility that changes in sp and
up could have been brought about by an
increased utilization of glucose was also
considered.  an intravenous glucose toler-
ance test (method of macho and licko
(8)) was carried out in another group of
patients on control days and on days of
pyrotherapy five hours after the pyrogen
administration.  an increase in the rate of
"glucose utilization" was observed
(table 2).  however a different opinion is
found in the literature.  in the course of
glucose tolerance tests, conn (3) and
comparini (9) observed a lowered rate of
glucose utilization in febrile subjects.
malizia (10) found an accentuated rate
of decline of serum phosphorus during
glucose tolerance tests in subjects with
high temperatures, but the glycemic
responses did not differ from those ob-
tained when controls without fever were
subjected to the same tests.  whether it
be for utilization purposes or not, the
fact remains that a massive transfer of
phosphorus from the serum into the
tissues takes place in fever.
