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Effect of Selenium on Rat Growth, Growth Hormone and Diet Utilization^1,2,

Department of Animal Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50010

Female rats were fed a selenium-deficient diet composed of Torula yeast, sucrose, vitamins (including tocopheryl acetate) and minerals from weaning and during breeding, gestation and lactation. The offspring were used to study the effects of selenium on growth, diet utilization and growth hormone status. The Torula yeast diet containing 200 IU dl--tocopheryl acetate was fed alone or supplemented with 0.025 or 0.1 ppm of selenium as selenite. Rats fed the selenium-supplemented diets grew significantly faster and consumed significantly more diet than rats fed the unsupplemented diet. Anterior pituitary weights were lower in seleniumdeficient rats, but if expressed per unit of body weight, were similar to pituitary weights of selenium-supplemented animals. Total growth hormone in the anterior pituitary was reduced in selenium-deficient rats. A metabolism study indicated that rats allowed ad libitum access to supplemented diets consumed more diet and obtained more metabolizable energy from the diet than rats fed the deficient diet. If the intake of rats fed the supplemented diets was limited to that of rats allowed ad libitum access to deficient diet, growth of rats was similar. However, metabolizable energy content of the diet increased quadratically and nitrogen digestibility increased linearly as the level of selenium increased. Selenium deficiency reduced growth primarily by decreasing diet consumption, but also reduced the utilization of energy and nitrogen.

KEY WORDS: • selenium • growth • diet utilization • growth hormone

¹ Journal Paper No. J-8202 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project 1943.

² Presented in part at the Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Atlantic City, N.J., 1975.

Manuscript received 16 June 1975.