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Inositol Requirement of the Gerbil¹

Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

The inositol requirement of the female gerbil fed a purified diet containing 20% coconut oil is estimated to be 70 to 120 mg/kg of diet including the 20 mg/kg of diet present in the purified diet as a contaminant. The addition of cholesterol to this diet (0.2 to 0.5%) raises the inositol requirement although the quantitative relationship between the cholesterol content and inositol requirement is unclear. Male gerbils fed the diet containing coconut oil develop varying degrees of inositol deficiency but less than that demonstrated by the female animals. Their requirement with this diet is thus more than 20 mg/kg of diet but less than that of females. Female gerbils occasionally develop modest lesions of inositol deficiency when fed a diet containing safflower oil as the dietary fat and males apparently never. Thus with this diet the requirement of the females appears to be somewhat above 20 mg/kg of diet. Males probably have sufficient capacity to synthesize inositol so that they have no dietary requirement when fed a diet containing unsaturated fat.

KEY WORDS: • inositol requirement • gerbil • intestinal lipodystrophy • cholesterol • dietary fat

¹ Supported in part by Public Health Service Research Grants HE-12399 and K6-AM-18455 from the National Institutes of Health and the Fund for Research and Teaching, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health.

Manuscript received 16 October 1973.