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Milk Carnitine Affects Organ Carnitine Concentration in Newborn Rats^1,2,3,

Carlos A. Flores⁴, Caroline Hu, John Edmond^* and Otakar Koldovsky

Departments of Pediatrics and Physiology and the Steele Memorial Children's Research Center, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, AZ 85724 ^* Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA

Previous studies suggest that exogenous milk carnitine may be necessary during the suckling period to maintain normal fat metabolism. To characterize the relationship between milk carnitine and carnitine in body organs, newborn rats were fed from birth a rat milk substitute with or without 300 µmol/L L-carnitine, corresponding to the concentration present in rat milk, for either 2 or 4 d. Carnitine concentrations in heart, skeletal muscle, liver and small intestine were compared with levels in rat pups that were never fed (d 0) and those that were nursed by their mothers for 4 d. Carnitine supplementation resulted in significantly higher concentrations of carnitine in all organs studied after 4 d compared with nursed controls. Relative intestinal carnitine pool size was 38.1 ± 3.0, 22.6 ± 1.0, 7.9 ± 0.5 and 2.3 ± 0.7 µmol/g body wt in supplemented, nursed, unsupplemented and never fed pups, respectively (P < 0.05, compared with one another). These results indicate that carnitine organ concentrations are related to dietary intake during the early suckling period and that the small intestine is a considerable and previously unrecognized proportion of the carnitine pool of suckling animals.

KEY WORDS: • rats • carnitine • intestinal transport • metabolism

¹ Previously published in part in abstract form: Flores, C.A., Hu, C., Johnson, S., Edmond, J. & Koldovsky, O. (1991) Diet-induced tissue carnitine depletion in the neonatal rat. Gastroenterology 100: A522 (abs).

² Supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant HD28436 and the Arizona Disease Control Research Commission #82-2684.

³ The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

⁴ To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Manuscript received 24 February 1995. Revision accepted 26 February 1996.

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