Pernicious anemia, definition

When it was administered to patients with pernicious anemia in relapse, a single dose of 40 mg. (one case) and daily doses of 4 mg. for 10 days (two cases) caused a reticulocytosis and rises of R.B.C., Hb., and V.P.R.B.C. sufficient to give clear evidence of intrinsic factor activity (Thompson and Latner, 1954). Daily doses of 1 mg. produced definite but slight responses in two of three cases. Single doses were given with 50 jug. vitamin Bi and daily doses with 5 /ig- (see pages 157-158). 

Inasmuch as the chief difficulty in the work on the purification of active materials has been the relative scarcity of pernicious anemia patients, many worthy attempts have been made to develop an animal assay the guinea pig, dog, cat, pigeon, swine, monkey, and rabbit have all been tried without definite success if any. Creskoff and Fritz Hugh have covered this subject admirably in their review of standardization and assay of liver extracts (20). At any rate the clinical assay still is the only reliable way of following the fractionation procedures. 

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