A series of chemical analyses comparing normal meconium with meconium from a patient with meconium ileus demonstrated the following differences:a. Normal meconium contained over four times the amount of total reducing sugar found in the meconium from a patient with meconium ileus. About 15% of the reducing sugar of both the normal and the abnormal meconium was dialyzable.b. Normal meconium contained less total nitrogen than meconium from a patient with meconium ileus. Most of this was found to be nonprotein, while that of the abnormal meconium was mostly protein in nature.c. The phosphorus and purine contents were minimal in both samples.The ammonium sulfate fractionation of normal meconium differed from that of meconium from a patient with meconium ileus.Alcohol fractionation of normal meconium gave precipitates whose reducing sugar to nitrogen ratios rose from 3.2 to 6.6 with increasing alcohol concentrations. Meconium from a patient with meconium ileus gave precipitates whose reducing sugar to nitrogen ratios rose from 0.47 to 0.86 with increasing alcohol concentrations.The action of pepsin and trypsin on normal meconium was not significant; on meconium from a patient with meconium ileus trypsin increased the per cent of nonprotein nitrogen twice and pepsin, six-fold.The reducing sugar to nitrogen ratio of meconium from a premature infant was shown to increase as it proceeded down the intestinal tract.
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