PERNICIOUS ANEMIA

Abstract

It is well known that patients with pernicious anemia have a more or less pronounced tendency toward edema, and that they usually have edema, especially in the later stages of the disease. Edema has always been considered a link in the clinical symptomatology of this disease, but a closer study of its pathogenesis has been limited. In most instances, edema is understood to be nephrogenetic (Makarow¹), but it is also thought to be determined by extrarenal factors (Saltzman²). In both cases, the authors seem inclined to regard the anemia itself, the low hemoglobin percentage, as the determining factor. Again, in patients with pernicious anemia, one finds a characteristic change in the excretion of water. Christian³ and Stieglitz⁴ stated that patients generally show a tendency toward fixation of the specific gravity of the urine without accompanying polyuria and with a relative increase of the nocturnal urine. Saltzman,