Sugars in the Blood and Urine of Children Following the Ingestion of Disaccharides

It has previously been shown that reducing sugars are frequently excreted in the urine by mature and premature newborn babies (Haworth and McCredie, 1956; Haworth and MacDonald, 1957). Other workers, using paper chromatographic methods, have also found small amounts of sugars in the urines of children and usually higher concentrations of lactose and galactose in urines from young babies (Woolf, 1951; Apthorp, 1957; Bickel, 1959). Coant, Glowacki and Reardon (1959) found a high urinary excretion rate of sugars by premature babies which could be correlated with the amount of lactose in the feedings. This paper describes further observations on sugars in the urine and blood of newborn babies and older children following the oral ingestion of differ-ent disaccharides. Analytical Methods The chromatographic technique employed for the separation of sugars in blood and urine was the same as that used previously (Haworth and McCredie, 1956; Haworth and MacDonald, 1957), being a modification of the method originally described by Williams (1954). The filter papers were bisected after removal from the solvent and one half was sprayed with a benzidine developer and the other half with a phloroglucinol reagent (Horrocks and Manning, 1949). Glucose, fructose, lactose, galactose and pentoses were identified by the former reagent and sucrose by the latter. With a double application of the test substance, mono-saccharides could be identified in concentrations of about 10 mg./100 ml. and disaccharides in rather lower concentrations. Blood sugar estimations were performed by the method