Radiocarbon Estimates Of Intestinal Absorption

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Abstract
The breath excretion of radiocarbon is an important quantitative measurement of the catabolic fate of carbon, and the excretion of labeled carbon dioxide from carbon 14-tagged metabolites potentially is a dynamic way of studying metabolic functions in living organisms.1Breath excretion of carbon 14 dioxide represents a nondestructive method of investigating intermediary metabolism in patients, and if the rates of C14O2respiration are measured from a variety of labeled substrates, it should be possible to define the relative importance of major metabolic patterns. In a given patient it is possible to obtain information on a specific metabolic process with the intravenous administration of a selected substrate.2-6 Our interest in this technique has been directed to the study of absorption from the gastrointestinal tract after the ingestion of labeled substrates. Because of the relative inaccessibility of the intestinal tract and because of the difficulties encountered when