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The Effect of Purified Diets, and Their Modifications, on Growth and Testicular Degeneration in Male Rats^*

From the The Osborn Zoölogical Laboratory, Yale University, and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven; and the Department of Anatomy, School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

The testicular degeneration, previously described as occurring after feeding male rats on a basal "purified" diet (18% casein, 54% starch, 15% lard, 9% butterfat, 4% salts and .2-.4 grams of yeast, daily), has been found to occur equally as rapidly in animals fed similar dietaries in which the protein constitutent was casein, edestin or lactalbumin, at a 35% level, or meat residue, at a 20% or 30% level.

Daily supplements of 5, 10, 20, 30 or 40 grams of fresh green lettuce or 1.6 grams of dried lettuce (the dried equivalent of 33.6 grams of fresh lettuce), supplied sufficient vitamin E to prevent testicular degeneration in male rats reared on the "purified" basal diets. Daily supplements of .34 and .68 grams of dried lettuce, and of .4 grams of dried alfalfa, were inadequate.

Fresh lettuce was found, in these experiments, to be approximately eight times as rich in vitamin E as its dried equivalent.

Both the fresh and dried supplements contained some factor capable of inducing an unusually rapid rate of growth, as well as an increased growth capacity, in male rats. The possible relation of this factor to vitamin E and to other growth factors is discussed.

The erythrocyte and hemoglobin content of the blood of sterile male rats, fed diets deficient in vitamin E, were normal.

Histological examination of the adrenals, thyroids, pancreas, liver, spleen and lymph glands of sterile male rats has failed to reveal histopathological changes.

^** National Research Fellow in the Biological Sciences, 1925–26.

Manuscript received 3 December 1928.