Erythropoietic Effect of Cobalt in Patients with or without Anemia

Abstract

COBALT in the form of one of its salts, usually cobaltous chloride or cobaltous nitrate, has been shown to produce polycythemia in amphibia, birds and mammals.^{1 2 3} In mammals the increased concentration of red blood cells in the circulation is due, as in other types of polycythemia, largely to an increase in the circulating red-cell mass.^{4 , 5} That the polycythemia is produced by increased red-cell production is indicated by an initial or by a maintained reticulocytosis,^{6 , 7} and an increase in erythroid cells in the bone marrow^{8 , 9} and in extramedullary locations.⁹ In some species the slight bilirubinemia⁷ presumably results from a partially compensatory . . .