The disturbance of fat metabolism as a causative agent or a contributing factor in psoriasis has been the subject of many investigations. Recent work has shown that an alcoholic extraction of raw pancreas from which lipid materials have been excluded by ether extraction, i. e. lipocaic, appears to play some role in the metabolism or transport of fat. When given to depancreatized dogs who are receiving insulin and are on a normal diet, it prevents the fatty infiltration which usually develops in these animals. It has been found to reduce the abnormally high lipid content of the blood of persons with xanthoma.1
There is no complete agreement that lipocaic is a hormone. Dragstedt has persisted in considering this noncholine lipotropic component of pancreas to be a hormone.2 This view has been vigorously attacked by Chaikoff in a series of papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Whereas Dragstedt