Ca-48 metabolism studies

Calcium metabolism has been studied in depth physiologically and is a relatively well-understood element in biochemistry and medicine. There is still only restricted knowledge of the metabolic fate of calcium in normal and abnormal paediatric subjects. The latter is partially owing to inadequate techniques for tracing and modelling calcium pathways in children. The advent of radioactive tracers has unquestionably enhanced medical research and improved the quality of many metabolic studies. The present study was aimed at the development, promotion and justification of a new tracer technique using the stable isotope, calcium-48. The obvious advantages of such a technique are its harmlessness tothe subject, its applicability to both short- and long-term studies as well as its usefulness to the study for which it was originally motivated, viz research defining the actual relationship between a calcium-deficient diet and the occurrence of rickets in rural Black children in South Africa. Exploratory instrumental analyses were performed specifically with serum samples. This proved successful enough to develop a less specific pre-concentration technique which improved the sensitivity and reduces the cost of doing calcium-48 metabolism studies. The results of a simple metabolic study are presented whereby the scope of the technique is demonstrated in a real situation. The possibilities and limitations of double-isotope metabolic studies are discussed, particularly with regard to strontium as the second tracer