Metabolism of Rose Bengal

Abstract

ROSE bengal has been used for chromo-excretion liver tests usually without a more accurate investigation of the composition of the dye. From the results of Stowe et al.¹, it appears that only highly halogenated derivatives of fluorescein are selectively excreted by the liver. It is important to use a pure preparation which does not contain less-halogenated derivatives. Recently, a number of authors^2–4 directed attention to the heterogeneous character of commercial preparations, but only Bocci⁴ isolated pure rose bengal (tetrachlorotetraiodofluorescein) by paper chromatography and used it for investigations in metabolism. Recent publications^3–5 indicate that rose bengal is not metabolized by the organism and is not transformed into other derivatives which can be detected by paper chromatography.