Treatment of experimental murine amyloidosis with dimethyl sulfoxide.

Dimethyl sulfoxide was administered intravenously for 60 days to twenty mice with casein-induced amyloidosis. Partial or total disappearance of amyloid deposits occurred in all treated animals. The urine of these animals contained a substance from which amyloid fibrils could be synthesized. A control group of mice with casein-induced amyloidosis given saline injections showed massive amyloid deposition in the liver and in the spleen at the end of the experiment. Neither the urine of these mice nor the urine of normal control mice treated with dimethyl sulfoxide contained substances from which amyloid fibrils could be synthesized. It is our assumption that dimethyl sulfoxide treatment of mice with amyloidosis resulted in a break up of amyloid fibres into small subunits which were excreted in the urine.