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Dietary Lysine and Carnitine: Relation to Growth and Fatty Livers in Rats¹

Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee 37232

Male weanling rats were fed a 72% rice diet containing no detectable carnitine and limiting in threonine and lysine. Such dietary conditions may simulate protein malnutrition in man. Under these conditions growth impairment, anemia, hypoproteinemia, and fatty liver developed. The study focused principally on the fatty liver syndrome which was corrected to varying extents depending on degrees of supplementation with carnitine, lysine, threonine, and appropriate combinations of these nutrients. Such reduction in fatty liver accumulation was accounted for principally by the lowering of triglycerides, but also in part by total cholesterol levels. All the data, which also included monitoring carnitine uptake by the tissues and measurement of plasma triglycerides, were consistent with the view that fatty liver accumulation occurs in amino acid deficient diets because (a) of an impairment in the synthesis of the lipoprotein complex mandatory for triglyceride secretion from the liver and (b) from a deficiency of carnitine needed for the intramitochondrial transport of fatty acids prerequisite for their oxidation.

KEY WORDS: • carnitine • lysine • fatty liver • protein malnutrition

¹ This was supported by Grants 2 R01 AM 16019 and 4R22 AM-08317 from the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolic and Digestive Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service.

² Present address: Division of Nutrition, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok 4, Thailand.

³ Present address: Department of Biochemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

⁴ Person to whom requests for reprints should be sent.

Manuscript received 23 June 1975.