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Effect of Dietary Essential Fatty Acids on Vitamin A Utilization in the Rat^1,2,

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011

After their liver reserves of vitamin A were enhanced to ca. 300 µg retinol/g by 5 large daily oral doses of retinyl palmitate, groups of rats (n = 6) were fed a vitamin A-free diet containing 10% corn oil, coconut oil or linseed oil, with or without vitamin E, for a 10-day period. The composition of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in liver lipids reflected the dietary composition, with linoleate and linolenate being markedly increased in the livers of rats fed the corn and linseed oil diets, respectively, relative to those fed the coconut oil diet. In contrast, the predominant retinyl ester in the livers of rats on all three diets was retinyl palmitate (>80%), with no dietrelated change noted in the relatively small amounts of retinyl linoleate (1–4%) or of retinyl stearate and linolenate (6–11%) present. The depletion of vitamin A from the liver during the 10-day period was slight (10%) and similar on all three diets. Thus, the ingestion of polyunsaturated fatty acids, with or without vitamin E, did not significantly influence either the mobilization rate or the ester composition of liver vitamin A reserves of rats in good vitamin A status. The relationship of these studies to previous investigations in which PUFA was shown to reduce liver and plasma concentrations of vitamin A is discussed.

KEY WORDS: • vitamin A • retinol • liver reserves • polyunsaturated fatty acids • vitamin E • -tocopherol • retinyl ester composition

¹ Supported by a grant-in-aid from the Competitive Research Grants Program of the Science & Education Administration, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, No. 5901-0410-8-0011, by the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, and by the World Food Institute, Iowa State University, Presented in part at the Twelfth Int. Congr. Nutr., San Diego, CA. Aug. 16–21. 1981; Tomassi, G., Olson, J. A. & Gunning, D. B. (1981) p. 124 (abs.), AIN, Bethesda, MD.

² Journal Paper No. J-10746 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, IA; Project No. 2534.

³ Distinguished Foreign Scholar, World Food Institute, Iowa State University.

⁴ Present address: Istituto Nazionale della Nutrizione, Via Ardeatina, 546, 00179 Rome, Italy.

⁵ To whom reprint requests should be sent.

Manuscript received 7 September 1982.