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Sequential Renal Lipid Changes in Weanling Rats Fed a Choline-deficient Diet¹

Centro de Patologia Experimental, Departamento de Patologia, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

To clarify conflictive aspects related to the possible pathogenic role of renal lipid changes in the usually fatal renal necrosis occurring in choline-deficient rats, a severely hypolipotropic basal diet that induces renal necrosis was fed ad libitum to male rats for 5 days. Control rats were pair-fed the same basal diet supplemented with choline. Renal lipid changes were sequentially studied at days 2, 4, and 5, and the values of these determinations were expressed using different base parameters to facilitate adequate interpretation. Since at day 5 almost 50% of the choline-deficient rats had renal necrosis, the data obtained at this time were separated into those preceding and those accompanying necrosis. The analyses of the results obtained under these conditions suggested that the most significant prenecrotic lipid change is a decrease in the renal content of phospholipids occurring shortly before necrosis (day 5). At this time the levels of sphingomyelin in the nonnecrotic kidneys of choline-deficient rats were significantly higher than those of the control rats while the levels of phosphatidylinositol were significantly lower. It is concluded that contrary to recent proposals, the possibility still exists that a renal phospholipid deficit and/or other more subtle changes in the individual renal phospholipids may play a role in the pathogenesis of this condition.

KEY WORDS: • choline deficiency • renal necrosis • renal lipids • renal phospholipids

¹ Supported by Grant MA-1904 from the Medical Research Council of Canada.

² Present address: The Research Institute of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada.

³ Present address: Grupo de Bioestadistica del Servicio Universitario de Computacion, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Manuscript received 28 May 1974.