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Obligatory Urinary and Fecal Nitrogen Losses in Young Chinese Men^{1, 2,}

Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, and Department of Nutrition and Food Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Fifty healthy Chinese male university students, 20 to 32 years of age and 42 to 75 kg body weight consumed daily for 14 days an essentially protein-free diet. Urine was analyzed daily for nitrogen (N) and creatinine, and fecal N was measured on pooled samples. The average for days 10 to 14 was taken as the obligatory urinary N loss. Obligatory urinary N was normally distributed, averaging (mean ± SD) 33.4 ± 4.2 mg N/kg body weight, 1.42 ± 0.15 g N/g creatinine, and 1.3 ± 0.2 mg N/basal kilocalorie, data which were significantly lower than for comparable Caucasians previously studied in the same manner at M.I.T. Obligatory fecal N was 13.1 ± 2.5 mg N/kg body weight, amounting to 28% of the total obligatory N loss. It was significantly higher than the value for the Caucasian subjects. However, the excretion data for the Chinese subjects were within the range of values reported from other studies with Caucasians. Statistically significant correlations were found between obligatory urinary N and body weight, basal metabolic rate, and creatinine. For nine subjects studied twice, once during a hot season and again during a cooler season, obligatory N loss was lower during the season of higher environmental temperature.

KEY WORDS: • obligatory nitrogen losses • Chinese • man

¹ Mainly financed by the United States Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, Grant no. 5-R22 AM 12095, and partly financed by the National Science Council, Republic of China.

² A preliminary report of this study was presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Formosan Medical Association, Taipei, Taiwan, November 1969, J. Formosan Med. Ass. 68: 639 (abstr.).

Manuscript received 27 March 1972.