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The Limitations of Whole Tissue Analysis to Define Linolenic Acid Deficiency

Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine, The Zoological Society of London, Regents Park, London, N.W.1.

It has been claimed on the basis of a deficient diet and on whole head, liver and heart analysis, that linolenic acid is not essential to the rat (J. Nutr. 101: 937, 1971). The present studies show that the methodology was inadequate to support this conclusion. Analytical data are presented which illustrate the principle that whole tissue analysis need not define the content of linolenic acid metabolites in cell membrane phosphoglycerides. In particular, rat brain ethanolamine phosphoglycerides (EPG) contained 22% of their fatty acids as C22:6,n-3 but the contribution of brain EPG to the total head lipid was only 1.5%. It was estimated that analysis of total head fatty acids could not be used as evidence of deficiency of linolenate metabolites in brain EPG.

KEY WORDS: • linolenic acid deficiency • brain lipids • docosahexaenoic acid • whole tissue fatty acid analyses

Manuscript received 8 March 1972.