Effects of intraperitoneally injected vicine and convicine on the rat: Induction of favism‐like signs

Rats were injected intraperitoneally with single or several successive doses of vicine or convicine. Single injections of these compounds at different concentrations caused increased respiration rates, generalised cyanosis, abdominal convolutions and, after several hours, death which appeared to be caused by asphyxiation. The tissues of the dead animals were engorged with dark brown blood and the large intestine and caecum contained entrapped gases and watery digesta and faecal matter. A second study demonstrated that injected vicine and convicine were cleared from the intraperitoneal cavity over several hours via the kidney and large intestine and that they were cleaved in the digesta of the large intestine and colon to divicine and isouramil. In a third study, rats were injected daily for 10 days with vicine or convicine. There were increases in spleen weight and blood monocytes and neutrophil counts and decreases in liver weight, blood glutathione and glucose concentrations, and lymphocyte counts. Blood from rats pretreated in vivo with convicine was shown to have an altered ultraviolet absorbance pattern. A similar pattern developed in vitro only in the presence of the aglycones of vicine (divicine) or convicine (isouramil) but not in the presence of the compounds themselves. The results of these studies demonstrate that vicine and convicine when injected intraperitoneally into the rat are converted to their aglycones which cause signs similar in many respects to those observed in the human metabolic disease, favism.