Simultaneous determinations of anaerobic glycolysis, hexokinase activity (HxK), glucose‐6‐phosphate dehydrogenase activity (G6PD) and acetyl‐cholinesterase activity (AChE) were made in the whole red cell populations of patients and of healthy subjects, and in the layers of the centrifuged cell packs of selected patients to give regression lines for each parameter plotted against each of the others. Apparently normal interrelationships were found in blood loss and in haemolytic disease of various origins.
Abnormalities were revealed which would escape notice if a single parameter were assayed. These were relative, not absolute, deficiency of anaerobic glycolysis in a case of congenital nonspherocytic haemolytic disease with no deficiency of G6PD, HxK or pyruvate kinase; of HxK in a case of unexplained anaemia; and of AChE in a case of Coombs positive haemolytic disease.
In a case of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria AChE was severely deficient while glycolysis, HxK and G6PD were extraordinarily high and appeared normally interrelated. The patient had been transfused just before these studies, and calculations based on the enzyme data led to the hypothesis that in this case the donor cells were rapidly destroyed.
Observations in normal blood showed that values for G6PD and AChE occur as two independent normal distributions. The same was true for glycolysis and AChE. Glycolysis and G6PD were correlated but did not approach a perfect functional relationship.
There is evidence that high G6PD unrelated to red cell age occurs in malignant disease, but it is not conclusive.
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