Enzymes & Doubts

The era when sulfa drugs were the wonders of the medical world was quickly followed by the antibiotic age, and then came a time when hormones held the center of the medical stage. Next, thought some enthusiastic researchers, would come the age of enzymes--some of nature's complex chemicals which act as catalysts in countless physiological reactions. A star among the enzymes was expected to be trypsin, secreted by the pancreas. It was known to dissolve dead tissue around wounds, but a team of Manhattan researchers led by Dr. Irving Innerfield made far more dramatic claims for it.

Now the A.M.A. Journal has published a full-dress report by Innerfield & Co., and the argument is on. Other researchers using similar methods have tried to duplicate Dr. Innerfield's results and have failed utterly. In fact, say some, trypsin is too dangerous to be used at all in many of the cases for which Dr. Innerfield recommends it.

At first, trypsin was used mainly in wound dressings or in local injections to clear infections in the chest. Lately, in purified form, it has been injected into veins and muscles. Dr. Innerfield dripped it into the veins of rabbits and dogs and concluded that it was safe; large doses, he said, had a powerful effect in preventing the formation of blood clots and dissolving those already formed. He has since given it to 428 patients with 52 different complaints and, he says, with good effect in nearly all: reduction of inflammation and swelling in arthritis, dissolution of blood clots in the abdominal wall, clearing of blocked sinuses, and "remarkable improvement" in 71 cases of phlebitis with clots.

Almost simultaneously, Heart Specialist Irving S. Wright reported opposite and alarming results after experiments with trypsin which he and Dr. Alex Taylor did at New York Hospital. Half their rabbits died, and were found to have blood clots or hemorrhages in the heart and lungs. Dr. Wright quoted two other doctors who had given trypsin to nine human patients: six of them developed a total of eleven blood clots in the veins into which the enzyme was dripped. Dr. Wright concluded that trypsin should not yet be made available for general prescription.

Since the Innerfield article appeared in the A.M.A. Journal, doctors and laymen all over the U.S. have been bombarding Chicago's Armour Laboratories with requests for the purified form of trypsin. The laymen, and most doctors, will get none. Actually, more than 40 research groups have already worked with trypsin, and none has had as much success as Dr. Innerfield in dissolving clots. Some agree that it cuts down inflammation, but so do other things which are safer. The research will go on, and some day the contradictions will be resolved. Meanwhile, the dawn of the age of enzymes is delayed by clouds of doubt.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.