Enzyme Treatment

In the running medical fight over the therapeutic value of enzymes as natural catalysts (TIME, July 13), the leading spokesman for the affirmative fired off some new evidence last week. Dr. Irving Innerfield of New York Medical College told the Toledo Academy of Medicine that new methods of administering enzymes to patients are safer than the old, and no less effective in speeding recovery from a variety of diseases, including thrombophlebitis, diabetes, rheumatic fever, arthritis and acute eye infections.

The specific enzyme on which Dr. Innerfield has been working is trypsin, a secretion of the pancreas. In some situations, claims Dr. Innerfield, trypsin can be the answer to a doctor's prayer. As a therapeutic agent, it effectively speeds up the body's host reaction to injuries. Moving in the blood stream to an area of inflammation, trypsin can stimulate the white corpuscles there to prodigious feats of valor against invading organisms.

At first Dr. Innerfield and his associates at Manhattan's Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospital gave trypsin to patients by intravenous drip. Other medical researchers objected that this method was unsafe, and a possible cause of blood clots. While not expressly conceding the point, Inner-field worked out another way of administering trypsin--intramuscularly.

Dr. Innerfield cautions that trypsin must be used with care, and only in cases of acute inflammatory reaction where the cells undergoing changes are not irretrievably damaged. If this is done, he told his Toledo audience, intramuscular trypsin is "safe and effective." Asked one doc-- tor: What about using trypsin for coronary thrombosis, a disease for which it was once thought to be valuable? Answered Researcher Innerfield, who is just beginning a long series of tests in this matter: "In three years I hope to be able to help you out."

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