A B S T R A C T To determine whether the phosphaturic response to circulating parathyroid hormone (PTH) is exaggerated in patients with familial x-linked hypophosphatemic vitamin D-resistant rickets (FHR), we examined the phosphaturic response to parathyroid extract (PTE) (administered intravenously in the posthypercalcemic state) in two unrelated adult hemizygotes with FHR. In these two patients whose plasma concentration of PTH was normal (determined by radioimmunoassay), neither vitamin D nor phosphate therapy had been given during the past 10 yr. Two normal men and a hypophosphatemic man with intestinal malabsorption, hypocalcemia, and osteomalacia served as control subjects. In all subjects, calcium gluconate was administered intravenously from 6 p.m. to 12 midnight at a rate that maintained the concentration of serum calcium at 13-15 mg/ 100 ml during the administration of calcium. When normocalcemia had recurred the next morning, and the plasma PTH concentration and urinary excretion of cyclic 3',5'-AMP were reduced, PTE was administered intravenously at successively increasing rates of 0.1, 0.4, and 0.8 U/kg per h, each rate lasting 90 min. Minutes after the initiation of PTE in the affected hemizygotes, fractional excretion of filtered phosphate increased from negligible values to values strikingly greater than those of similarly studied control subjects and plateaued at strikingly greater values throughout further administration of PTE. This phenomenon of exaggerated phosphaturia could not be attributed to volume expansion, decreases in serum concentration of calcium during the study, differences in percent of administered calcium Dr. Short's current address is the Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. 94305.