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Effects of dietary histidine and arginine on plasma amino acid and urea concentrations of men fed a low nitrogen diet^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5,}

Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Food Systems Management, and Department of Statistics and Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65201

The effects of dietary histidine and arginine on fasting and 1 and 2 hour postprandial plasma free amino acid and urea concentrations were studied in six young men. For 1 week each, they were fed six different diets containing 6.3 g of nitrogen daily. Each diet contained eight indispensable amino acids, cystine and tyrosine proportioned as in casein and a different mixture of dispensable nitrogen: A) six dispensable amino acids plus arginine (diet 1) or plus histidine and arginine (diet 2) in the casein pattern, or B) an isonitrogenous amount of glycine and diammonium citrate alone (diet 3), with histidine (diet 4), with arginine (diet 5) or with histidine and arginine (diet 6). The fasting plasma concentrations of the seven indispensable amino acids assayed and their similar postprandial patterns were unaffected by the dietary treatments. Both fasting and postprandial plasma histidine concentrations were significantly lower when the histidine-low diets were fed than when the histidine-supplemented diets were fed. Histidine supplementation promoted a reduction in fasting plasma urea nitrogens. Proline concentrations were lowered significantly when proline was removed from the dietary amino acid mixtures, but plasma arginine concentrations were unaffected by arginine removal. Plasma histidine was maintained at lower concentrations in dietary histidine deficiency than when histidine was added to the low nitrogen diets.

KEY WORDS: • histidine • arginine • plasma amino acids • plasma urea • adult humans

¹ Journal paper No. 7695 of the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.

² Part of a dissertation submitted by Ei Soon Cho to the University of Missouri in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree.

³ Presented in part at the meeting of the American Institute of Nutrition, Atlantic City, New Jersey, April, 1974; Federation Proc. 33, 711 (Abstr.).

⁴ Supported in part by National Institutes of Health Research Grant No. AM15832, The Nutrition Foundation, Inc. Grant No. 450, and the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.

⁵ The research protocol received approval from the Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects, School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Columbia prior to initiation of the experiment.

⁶ Present address: Department of Home Economics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242.

Manuscript received 8 November 1976.