Total Exchangeable Potassium and Chloride and Total Body Water in Healthy Men of Varying Fat Content

Abstract

During the past few years various attempts have been made to develop an improved standard of reference for comparison of those parameters of body composition which refer largely to lean body mass. Weir measured carcass chloride in dogs and found poor correlation between carcass chloride and body weight (1). He found, however, better correlation between carcass chloride and fatfree carcass weight (2). Corsa and co-workers (3) pointed out the theoretical desirability of relating total exchangeable potassium (Ke) to lean body mass or to a parameter closely related to lean body mass. Cheek and West (4) found that Ke, carcass potassium, Cle, and carcass chloride in rats were closely related to both fat-free carcass weight and to total body water (TBW). Muldowney, Crooks, and Bluhm (5, 6) measured Ke, Cle, antipyrine space, plasma volume, and red cell mass in adult human beings and compared all these except antipyrine space with lean body mass, derived from antipyrine space, and with creatinine excretion. They found that the correlation of each parameter with the derived lean body mass was significantly better than its correlation with body weight. McMurrey and co-workers (7) measured total exchangeable chloride, potassium, and sodium (Cle, Ke, and Nae), red cell mass, plasma volume, and TBW in a group of ten healthy men and ten healthy women. Their data show much better correlation of these parameters with TBW than with body weight.Recently, O'Meara, Birkenfeld, Gotch, and Edelman (8) have found that the mixing of administered K42 is prolonged in subjects who have edema. It was concluded by these authors that equilibration times should be extended to 40 hours when measuring Ke in sick patients. Because of the short half-life of K42, this makes the measurement * Present address: Medical Service, Veterans Administration Hospital, Boston, Mass. much more difficult to perform. Recently, however, apparatus has become available that makes it convenient to measure Ke after a mixing time of 40 hours, using a dose of only 50 microcuries of K42 (9, 10).In order to study the inter-relationships of parameters of body composition, these should be determined simultaneously in each subject. Data permitting such comparisons for healthy adults are scarce. Also, values for Ke in healthy adults with equilibration times of 40 hours are few. Finally, the effect of obesity on these inter-relationships is not known. In order to gather additional values permitting the study of these relationships, the present study was undertaken. Thirty-five healthy men were studied. They were chosen so that a wide range of fat content was encompassed. Simultaneous estimations of TBW, Ke, and Cle were made using tritiated water, K42, and Br52 as the tracers, respectively. The results confirm the close relationships previously reported between the magnitude of Ke and Cle, estimated by Br82, and the magnitude of TBW. The ratio Ke: TBW was significantly higher in muscular men (weightlifters) than in randomly selected or obese men.In addition, the values for t...

Distribution of Body Potassium in Healthy Elderly Subjects

“…These authors have sug gested that the potassium content of fat-free mass in older, non-obese subjects should be 58 mmol/kg in women and give a value of 67 mmol/kg for their 3 older male subjects. These estimates agree quite closely with the average figures of 65.5 and 57.8 mmol/kg for males and females, respectively, obtained from the literature covering all adult age groups [1,3,5,6,8,11,12,15,17,18,21,22,31,32], Systematic errors in the estimation of fatfree mass are unlikely to account for the dif ference between these values and those re corded in the present series. For example, the subtraction of 1SEE of body density from the recorded regression coefficient [14] will in crease the observed ratio WBK/FFM by 5.0% to 55.6 mmol/kg in the male subjects and by 4.9% to 54.4 mmol/kg in the female subjects.…”

Kidney, Water, and Electrolytes

“…Studies in hypophysectomized and nephrectomized dogs by Ganong, Mulrow and their associates (227,228) Body cell mass and composition have been reviewed by Moore and his associates (234). Total exchangeable potassium, chloride, and total body water have been determined in healthy men of varied fat content (235) .…”

Three-Component Body Composition Analysis Based on Potassium and Water Determinations

“…Friis-Hansen, G. Stoll, and F. D. Moore, 1952; M. Davis, H. V. Parker, I. C. Magnus, M. R. Ball, and F. C. Moore, 1958; T. H. Allen, B. E. Welch, T. T. Trujillo, and J. E. Roberts, 1959; T. H. Allen, E. C. Anderson, and W. H. Langham, 1960; E. A. Boling, W. L. Taylor, C. Entenman, and A. R. Behnke, 1962) on the average body water as a function of age for both sexes. Figure 2 l,1.…”