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Lipotropic Effect of Dextrin Versus Sucrose in Choline-deficient Rats¹

The Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto 101, Ontario, Canada

We determined the effect of the type of dietary carbohydrate on the amount of triglycerides accumulating in the livers of rats during the first 8 days of choline deficiency. Animals fed a choline-deficient diet with sucrose as the major carbohydrate accumulated about twice as much triglycerides in the liver as animals fed a diet in which dextrin replaced sucrose. This difference in lipid accumulation between the two groups was maintained even though one group was fed sucrose to which enough choline was added to simulate a small degree of contamination of dextrin with choline while another group of animals was fed dextrin from which most of the choline had been extracted by repeated washings with alcohol. In the choline-deficient rats fed dextrin the ceca were larger and the color of the stools lighter than in the animals fed sucrose. We believe that the partially protective effect of dextrin against fatty livers of choline deficiency is mediated through a change in intestinal bacterial flora making choline, or some related lipotropes, available to the choline-deficient rat.

Manuscript received 21 October 1969.